A comprehensive genomic history of extinct and living elephants

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Palkopoulou, Eleftheria, Lipson, Mark, Mallick, Swapan, Nielsen, Svend, Rohland, Nadin, Baleka, Sina, Karpinski, Emil, Ivancevic, Atma M., To, Thu-Hien, Kortschak, R. Daniel, Raison, Joy M., Qu, Zhipeng, Chin, Tat-Jun, Alt, Kurt W., Claesson, Stefan, Dalén, Love, MacPhee, Ross D. E., Meller, Harald, Roca, Alfred L., Ryder, Oliver A., Heiman, David, Young, Sarah, Breen, Matthew, Williams, Christina, Aken, Bronwen L., Ruffier, Magali, Karlsson, Elinor, Johnson, Jeremy, Di Palma, Federica, Alfoldi, Jessica, Adelson, David L., Mailund, Thomas, Munch, Kasper, Lindblad-Toh, Kerstin, Hofreiter, Michael, Poinar, Hendrik and Reich, David (2018) A comprehensive genomic history of extinct and living elephants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), 115 (11). E2566-E2574. ISSN 0027-8424

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Abstract

Elephantids are the world’s most iconic megafaunal family, yet there is no comprehensive genomic assessment of their relationships. We report a total of 14 genomes, including 2 from the American mastodon, which is an extinct elephantid relative, and 12 spanning all three extant and three extinct elephantid species including an ∼120,000-y-old straight-tusked elephant, a Columbian mammoth, and woolly mammoths. Earlier genetic studies modeled elephantid evolution via simple bifurcating trees, but here we show that interspecies hybridization has been a recurrent feature of elephantid evolution. We found that the genetic makeup of the straight-tusked elephant, previously placed as a sister group to African forest elephants based on lower coverage data, in fact comprises three major components. Most of the straight-tusked elephant’s ancestry derives from a lineage related to the ancestor of African elephants while its remaining ancestry consists of a large contribution from a lineage related to forest elephants and another related to mammoths. Columbian and woolly mammoths also showed evidence of interbreeding, likely following a latitudinal cline across North America. While hybridization events have shaped elephantid history in profound ways, isolation also appears to have played an important role. Our data reveal nearly complete isolation between the ancestors of the African forest and savanna elephants for ∼500,000 y, providing compelling justification for the conservation of forest and savanna elephants as separate species.

Item Type:	Article
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Norwich Medical School Faculty of Science > School of Biological Sciences
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Centres > Norwich Institute for Healthy Aging
Related URLs:	http://www.pnas.org/lookup/doi/10.1073/p...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	14 Nov 2020 01:14
Last Modified:	20 Apr 2023 18:34
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/77686
DOI:	10.1073/pnas.1720554115

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