Extended and continuous decline in effective population size results in low genomic diversity in the world’s rarest hyena species, the brown hyena

Westbury, MV, Hartmann, S, Barlow, A ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5532-9458, Wiesel, I, Leo, V, Welch, R, Parker, DM, Sicks, F, Ludwig, A, Dalén, L and Hofreiter, M, 2018. Extended and continuous decline in effective population size results in low genomic diversity in the world’s rarest hyena species, the brown hyena. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 35 (5), pp. 1225-1237. ISSN 0737-4038

Preview

Text 1234014_Barlow.pdf - Published version Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract

Hyenas (family Hyaenidae), as the sister group to cats (family Felidae), represent a deeply diverging branch within the cat-like carnivores (Feliformia). With an estimated population size of <10,000 individuals worldwide, the brown hyena (Parahyaena brunnea) represents the rarest of the four extant hyena species and has been listed as Near Threatened by the IUCN. Here, we report a high-coverage genome from a captive bred brown hyena and both mitochondrial and low-coverage nuclear genomes of 14 wild-caught brown hyena individuals from across southern Africa. We find that brown hyena harbor extremely low genetic diversity on both the mitochondrial and nuclear level, most likely resulting from a continuous and ongoing decline in effective population size that started ∼1 Ma and dramatically accelerated towards the end of the Pleistocene. Despite the strikingly low genetic diversity, we find no evidence of inbreeding within the captive bred individual and reveal phylogeographic structure, suggesting the existence of several potential subpopulations within the species.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Molecular Biology and Evolution
Creators:	Westbury, M.V., Hartmann, S., Barlow, A., Wiesel, I., Leo, V., Welch, R., Parker, D.M., Sicks, F., Ludwig, A., Dalén, L. and Hofreiter, M.
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Date:	May 2018
Volume:	35
Number:	5
ISSN:	0737-4038
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1093/molbev/msy037 DOI 1234014 Other
Rights:	© The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Science and Technology
Record created by:	Linda Sullivan
Date Added:	14 Nov 2019 10:58
Last Modified:	14 Nov 2019 11:04
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/38273

Actions (login required)

Edit View

Statistics

Views

Downloads