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- Mereu, Paolo, et al.
(författare)
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Matrilineal phylogeography of wild and feral sheep from the Mediterranean and the Middle East
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Mouflons are flagship species of the Mediterranean islands werethey persist. Once thought to be the remnants of a Europeanpopulation, archaeology suggests they were imported by humansto the islands of Cyprus in the Early Neolithic and laterto Corsica and Sardinia, and their status as wild animals hassince been disputed. To study the relationship between thisisland populations and other domestic and wild sheep fromthe Mediterranean we sequenced mitogenomes of 44 mouflonsfrom the islands, plus modern and ancient Sardinian domesticsheep and Anatolian mouflons. We used those in addition withpublicly available mitogenomes to reconstruct the phylogeny ofsheep and its closest wild relative, the Asiatic mouflon (Ovisgmelini) to describe how the free-ranging populations on theMediterranean islands fit. Our analysis highlights the structureof haplogroup B, where Sardinian mouflons form two geographicallyseparate clusters with gene flow between them and withdomestic sheep, and the isolation of the Corsican population,which appears as a basal lineage to all other sheep from thishaplogroup. While Corsican and Sardinian mouflon belong tobasal lineages of the domestic haplogroups associated with theearly European expansion, Cyprus mouflons are more relatedto Anatolian and Iranian mouflons belonging to the wild haplogroupX, which seems to be basal to the domestic C-E complex.These results highlight the unique genetic structure of thisisland populations while placing them in the wider context ofthe evolution of the Ovis genus.
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| 2. |
- Morell Miranda, Pedro, et al.
(författare)
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Ancient genomes reveal 7000 years of interconnected Demographic History between Sheep and Humans in Iberia.
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- As the first domestic livestock species, sheep has had a fundamentalrole in human populations since the Neolithic. Theirdemographic history is, however, poorly understood. We successfullysequenced 13 ancient sheep from 2 sites in NorthernIberia to up to 8.74× and 1 modern Corsican mouflon to describethis demographic history at the Western extreme of theMediterranean. Our results support an initial maritime expansioninto Iberia and that European mouflons descended fromferalized Neolithic sheep. We also describe a secondary expansionof Eastern ancestry in sheep at the same time when humanSteppe ancestry arrived to Iberia, and when we expect woollysheep to expand through Europe. Lastly, we found a third expansionin the Mediterranean area during the Roman period,when some historical sources mentioned fine-wool sheep beingtraded. We see evidence that this expansion had a significanteffect in shaping the modern European sheep gene pool leadingto modern breeds like the popular Merino. These resultsillustrate the dynamic history of Iberian sheep populations, andhow human cultural and demographic changes left their footprintsin the sheep gene pool, marking them as a useful proxyfor describing complex human demographic events.
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