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Hodges Lab

The evolutionary and phylogeographic history of woolly mammoths: a comprehensive mitogenomic analysis

AUTHORS

Chang DDan , Knapp MMichael , Enk JJacob , Lippold SSebastian , Kircher MMartin , Lister AAdrian , MacPhee RDRoss D E , Widga CChristopher , Czechowski PPaul , Sommer RRobert , Hodges EEmily , Stümpel NNikolaus , Barnes IIan , Dalén LLove , Derevianko AAnatoly , Germonpré MMietje , Hillebrand-Voiculescu AAlexandra , Constantin SSilviu , Kuznetsova TTatyana , Mol DDick , Rathgeber TThomas , Rosendahl WWilfried , Tikhonov ANAlexey N , Willerslev EEske , Hannon GGreg , Lalueza-Fox CCarles , Joger UUlrich , Poinar HHendrik , Hofreiter MMichael , Shapiro BBeth . Scientific reports. 2017 03 22; 7(). 44585

ABSTRACT

Near the end of the Pleistocene epoch, populations of the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) were distributed across parts of three continents, from western Europe and northern Asia through Beringia to the Atlantic seaboard of North America. Nonetheless, questions about the connectivity and temporal continuity of mammoth populations and species remain unanswered. We use a combination of targeted enrichment and high-throughput sequencing to assemble and interpret a data set of 143 mammoth mitochondrial genomes, sampled from fossils recovered from across their Holarctic range. Our dataset includes 54 previously unpublished mitochondrial genomes and significantly increases the coverage of the Eurasian range of the species. The resulting global phylogeny confirms that the Late Pleistocene mammoth population comprised three distinct mitochondrial lineages that began to diverge ~1.0-2.0 million years ago (Ma). We also find that mammoth mitochondrial lineages were strongly geographically partitioned throughout the Pleistocene. In combination, our genetic results and the pattern of morphological variation in time and space suggest that male-mediated gene flow, rather than large-scale dispersals, was important in the Pleistocene evolutionary history of mammoths.