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Synchronous genetic turnovers across Western Eurasia in Late Pleistocene collared lemmings
Author(s) -
Palkopoulou Eleftheria,
Baca Mateusz,
Abramson Natalia I.,
Sablin Mikhail,
Socha Paweł,
Nadachowski Adam,
Prost Stefan,
Germonpré Mietje,
Kosintsev Pavel,
Smirnov Nickolay G.,
Vartanyan Sergey,
Ponomarev Dmitry,
Nyström Johanna,
Nikolskiy Pavel,
Jass Christopher N.,
Litvinov Yuriy N.,
Kalthoff Daniela C.,
Grigoriev Semyon,
Fadeeva Tatyana,
Douka Aikaterini,
Higham Thomas F.G.,
Ersmark Erik,
Pitulko Vladimir,
Pavlova Elena,
Stewart John R.,
Węgleński Piotr,
Stankovic Anna,
Dalén Love
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
global change biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.146
H-Index - 255
eISSN - 1365-2486
pISSN - 1354-1013
DOI - 10.1111/gcb.13214
Subject(s) - pleistocene , range (aeronautics) , glacial period , ecology , phylogeography , population , geography , beringia , stadial , ancient dna , extinction (optical mineralogy) , biology , paleontology , phylogenetics , demography , biochemistry , materials science , sociology , gene , composite material
Recent palaeogenetic studies indicate a highly dynamic history in collared lemmings ( Dicrostonyx spp.), with several demographical changes linked to climatic fluctuations that took place during the last glaciation. At the western range margin of D. torquatus , these changes were characterized by a series of local extinctions and recolonizations. However, it is unclear whether this pattern represents a local phenomenon, possibly driven by ecological edge effects, or a global phenomenon that took place across large geographical scales. To address this, we explored the palaeogenetic history of the collared lemming using a next‐generation sequencing approach for pooled mitochondrial DNA amplicons. Sequences were obtained from over 300 fossil remains sampled across Eurasia and two sites in North America. We identified five mitochondrial lineages of D. torquatus that succeeded each other through time across Europe and western Russia, indicating a history of repeated population extinctions and recolonizations, most likely from eastern Russia, during the last 50 000 years. The observation of repeated extinctions across such a vast geographical range indicates large‐scale changes in the steppe‐tundra environment in western Eurasia during the last glaciation. All Holocene samples, from across the species' entire range, belonged to only one of the five mitochondrial lineages. Thus, extant D. torquatus populations only harbour a small fraction of the total genetic diversity that existed across different stages of the Late Pleistocene. In North American samples, haplotypes belonging to both D. groenlandicus and D. richardsoni were recovered from a Late Pleistocene site in south‐western Canada. This suggests that D. groenlandicus had a more southern and D. richardsoni a more northern glacial distribution than previously thought. This study provides significant insights into the population dynamics of a small mammal at a large geographical scale and reveals a rather complex demographical history, which could have had bottom‐up effects in the Late Pleistocene steppe‐tundra ecosystem.