Niemann, Jonas, Gopalakrishnan, Shyam, Yamaguchi, Nobuyuki et al. (4 more authors) (2021) Extended survival of Pleistocene Siberian wolves into the early 20th century on the island of Honshū. iScience. 101904. ISSN 2589-0042
Abstract
The Japanese or Honshū wolf was one the most distinct gray wolf subspecies due to its small stature and endemicity to the islands of Honshū, Shikoku, and Kyūshū. Long revered as a guardian of farmers and travellers, it was persecuted from the 17th century following a rabies epidemic, which led to its extinction in the early 20th century. To better understand its evolutionary history, we sequenced the nuclear genome of a 19th century Honshū wolf specimen to an average depth of coverage of 3.7✕. We find Honshū wolves were closely related to a lineage of Siberian wolves that were previously believed to have gone extinct in the Late Pleistocene, thereby extending the survival of this ancient lineage until the early 20th century. We also detected significant gene flow between Japanese dogs and the Honshū wolf, corroborating previous reports on Honshū wolf dog interbreeding.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | ©2020 The Author(s). |
Keywords: | Biological Sciences,Evolutionary Biology,Genetics,Phylogenetics |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of York |
Academic Units: | The University of York > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (York) > Archaeology (York) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number EUROPEAN COMMISSION 676154 |
Depositing User: | Pure (York) |
Date Deposited: | 05 Jan 2021 12:30 |
Last Modified: | 21 Jan 2025 17:50 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2020.101904 |
Status: | Published |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.isci.2020.101904 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:169624 |