In Search of the Elusive North: Evolutionary History of the Arctic Fox ( Vulpes lagopus ) in the Palearctic from the Late Pleistocene to the Recent Inferred from Mitogenomic Data

Despite the high level of interest, the population history of arctic foxes during the Late Pleistocene and Holocene remains poorly understood. Here we aimed to fill gaps in the demographic and colonization history of the arctic fox by analyzing new ancient DNA data from fossil specimens aged from 50...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Biology (Basel, Switzerland) Switzerland), 2023-12, Vol.12 (12), p.1517
Main Authors: Panitsina, Valentina A, Bodrov, Semyon Yu, Boulygina, Eugenia S, Slobodova, Natalia V, Kosintsev, Pavel A, Abramson, Natalia I
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
ancient DNA
Archipelagoes
Arctic fox
Biomes
Buffalo
Deoxyribonucleic acid
DNA
Endangered & extinct species
Evolutionary biology
Extinction (Biology)
Fossils
Foxes
Genetic diversity
Geographical distribution
Global warming
Habitats
Haplotypes
Holocene
Hypotheses
Local extinction
Megafauna
Mitochondrial DNA
mitochondrial genome
Museums
Phylogeny
Pleistocene
Population
Species extinction
the Urals
Tundra
Tundra ecology
Vegetation
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Despite the high level of interest, the population history of arctic foxes during the Late Pleistocene and Holocene remains poorly understood. Here we aimed to fill gaps in the demographic and colonization history of the arctic fox by analyzing new ancient DNA data from fossil specimens aged from 50 to 1 thousand years from the Northern and Polar Urals, historic DNA from museum specimens from the Novaya Zemlya Archipelago and the Taymyr Peninsula and supplementing these data by previously published sequences of recent and extinct arctic foxes from other regions. This dataset was used for reconstruction of a time-calibrated phylogeny and a temporal haplotype network covering four time intervals: Late Pleistocene (ranging from 30 to 13 thousand years bp), Holocene (ranging from 4 to 1 thousand years bp), historical (approximately 150 years), and modern. Our results revealed that Late Pleistocene specimens showed no genetic similarity to either modern or historical specimens, thus supporting the earlier hypothesis on local extinction rather than habitat tracking.
ISSN:2079-7737
2079-7737
DOI:10.3390/biology12121517