Ancient DNA suggests modern wolves trace their origin to a Late Pleistocene expansion from Beringia.

ABSTRACT: Grey wolves (Canis lupus) are one of the few large terrestrial carnivores that have maintained a wide geographical distribution across the Northern Hemisphere throughout the Pleistocene and Holocene. Recent genetic studies have suggested that, despite this continuous presence, major demographic changes occurred in wolf populations between the Late Pleistocene and early Holocene, and that extant wolves trace their ancestry to a single Late Pleistocene population. Both the geographical origin of this ancestral population and how it became widespread remain unknown. Here, we used a spatially and temporally explicit modelling framework to analyse a data set of 90 modern and 45 ancient mitochondrial wolf genomes from across the Northern Hemisphere, spanning the last 50,000 years. Our results su

SUBMITTER: Loog L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7317801 | biostudies-literature | 2020 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature