Ancient and modern genomes unravel the evolutionary history of the rhinoceros family

Only five species of the once-diverse Rhinocerotidae remain, making the reconstruction of their evolutionary history a challenge to biologists since Darwin. We sequenced genomes from five rhinoceros species (three extinct and two living), which we compared to existing data from the remaining three l...

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Hauptverfasser: Liu, Shanlin, Westbury, Michael V, Dussex, Nicolas, Mitchell, Kieren J, Sinding, Mikkel-Holger S, Heintzman, Peter D, Duchêne, David A, Kapp, Joshua D, von Seth, Johanna, Heiniger, Holly, Sánchez-Barreiro, Fatima, Margaryan, Ashot, André-Olsen, Remi, De Cahsan, Binia, Meng, Guanliang, Yang, Chentao, Chen, Lei, van der Valk, Tom, Moodley, Yoshan, Rookmaaker, Kees, Bruford, Michael W, Ryder, Oliver, Steiner, Cynthia, Bruins-van Sonsbeek, Linda G. R, Vartanyan, Sergey, Guo, Chunxue, Cooper, Alan, Kosintsev, Pavel, Kirillova, Irina V, Lister, Adrian M, Marques-Bonet, Tomas, Gopalakrishnan, Shyam, Dunn, Robert R, Lorenzen, Eline D, Shapiro, Beth, Zhang, Guojie, Antoine, Pierre-Olivier, Dalén, Love, Gilbert, Marcus Thomas Pius
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Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:Only five species of the once-diverse Rhinocerotidae remain, making the reconstruction of their evolutionary history a challenge to biologists since Darwin. We sequenced genomes from five rhinoceros species (three extinct and two living), which we compared to existing data from the remaining three living species and a range of outgroups. We identify an early divergence between extant African and Eurasian lineages, resolving a key debate regarding the phylogeny of extant rhinoceroses. This early Miocene (∼16 million years ago [mya]) split post-dates the land bridge formation between the Afro-Arabian and Eurasian landmasses. Our analyses also show that while rhinoceros genomes in general exhibit low levels of genome-wide diversity, heterozygosity is lowest and inbreeding is highest in the modern species. These results suggest that while low genetic diversity is a long-term feature of the family, it has been particularly exacerbated recently, likely reflecting recent anthropogenic-driven population declines.