In:
Science, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Vol. 358, No. 6365 ( 2017-11-17), p. 951-954
Abstract:
The extinct passenger pigeon was once the most abundant bird in North America, and possibly the world. Although theory predicts that large populations will be more genetically diverse, passenger pigeon genetic diversity was surprisingly low. To investigate this disconnect, we analyzed 41 mitochondrial and 4 nuclear genomes from passenger pigeons and 2 genomes from band-tailed pigeons, which are passenger pigeons’ closest living relatives. Passenger pigeons’ large population size appears to have allowed for faster adaptive evolution and removal of harmful mutations, driving a huge loss in their neutral genetic diversity. These results demonstrate the effect that selection can have on a vertebrate genome and contradict results that suggested that population instability contributed to this species’s surprisingly rapid extinction.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
0036-8075
,
1095-9203
DOI:
10.1126/science.aao0960
Language:
English
Publisher:
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Publication Date:
2017
detail.hit.zdb_id:
128410-1
detail.hit.zdb_id:
2066996-3
detail.hit.zdb_id:
2060783-0
SSG:
11
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