Historical biogeography of the leopard ( Panthera pardus ) and its extinct Eurasian populations

BMC Evolutionary Biology

Daniel W. Frster¹  Johanna L. A. Paijmans²  Kirstin Henneberger³  Axel Barlow⁴  Matthias Meyer⁵  Rasmus Worse Havmller⁶  Doris Nagel⁷  Birgit Nickel⁸ 

[1] Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany;Institute for Biochemistry and Biology, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany;Institute for Paleontology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria;Leibniz Institute for Zoo- and Wildlife Research, Berlin, Germany;Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark;Reiss-Engelhorn Museen and Curt-Engelhorn-Centre for Archaeometry, Mannheim, Germany;State Natural History Museum, Braunschweig, Germany;Zoological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia

关键词: Ancient DNA;    Hybridisation capture;    Leopards;    Mitochondrial genomes;    Mitogenomes;    mtDNA;    Palaeogenetics;    Panthera pardus;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12862-018-1268-0

学科分类：生物科学（综合）

来源: BioMed Central

【 摘 要 】

Resolving the historical biogeography of the leopard (Panthera pardus) is a complex issue, because patterns inferred from fossils and from molecular data lack congruence. Fossil evidence supports an African origin, and suggests that leopards were already present in Eurasia during the Early Pleistocene. Analysis of DNA sequences however, suggests a more recent, Middle Pleistocene shared ancestry of Asian and African leopards. These contrasting patterns led researchers to propose a two-stage hypothesis of leopard dispersal out of Africa: an initial Early Pleistocene colonisation of Asia and a subsequent replacement by a second colonisation wave during the Middle Pleistocene. The status of Late Pleistocene European leopards within this scenario is unclear: were these populations remnants of the first dispersal, or do the last surviving European leopards share more recent ancestry with their African counterparts? In this study, we generate and analyse mitogenome sequences from historical samples that span the entire modern leopard distribution, as well as from Late Pleistocene remains. We find a deep bifurcation between African and Eurasian mitochondrial lineages (~ 710 Ka), with the European ancient samples as sister to all Asian lineages (~ 483 Ka). The modern and historical mainland Asian lineages share a relatively recent common ancestor (~ 122 Ka), and we find one Javan sample nested within these. The phylogenetic placement of the ancient European leopard as sister group to Asian leopards suggests that these populations originate from the same out-of-Africa dispersal which founded the Asian lineages. The coalescence time found for the mitochondrial lineages aligns well with the earliest undisputed fossils in Eurasia, and thus encourages a re-evaluation of the identification of the much older putative leopard fossils from the region. The relatively recent ancestry of all mainland Asian leopard lineages suggests that these populations underwent a severe population bottleneck during the Pleistocene. Finally, although only based on a single sample, the unexpected phylogenetic placement of the Javan leopard could be interpreted as evidence for exchange of mitochondrial lineages between Java and mainland Asia, calling for further investigation into the evolutionary history of this subspecies.

【 授权许可】

CC BY