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Ancient DNA elucidates the lost world of western Indian Ocean giant tortoises and reveals a new extinct species from Madagascar
Kehlmaier, Christian Graciá, Eva Ali, Jason R. Campbell, Patrick Chapman, Sandra Ihlow, Flora Jalil, Nour-Eddine Pierre-Huyet, Laure Samonds, Karen
Kehlmaier, Christian
Graciá, Eva
Ali, Jason R.
Campbell, Patrick
Chapman, Sandra
Ihlow, Flora
Jalil, Nour-Eddine
Pierre-Huyet, Laure
Samonds, Karen
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2023-01-11
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sciadv.abq2574.pdf
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Abstract
Before humans arrived, giant tortoises occurred on many western Indian Ocean islands. We combined ancient DNA, phylogenetic, ancestral range, and molecular clock analyses with radiocarbon and paleogeographic evidence to decipher their diversity and biogeography. Using a mitogenomic time tree, we propose that the ancestor of the extinct Mascarene tortoises spread from Africa in the Eocene to now-sunken islands northeast of Madagascar. From these islands, the Mascarenes were repeatedly colonized. Another out-of-Africa dispersal (latest Eocene/Oligocene) produced on Madagascar giant, large, and small tortoise species. Two giant and one large species disappeared c. 1000 to 600 years ago, the latter described here as new to science using nuclear and mitochondrial DNA. From Madagascar, the Granitic Seychelles were colonized (Early Pliocene) and from there, repeatedly Aldabra (Late Pleistocene). The Granitic Seychelles populations were eradicated and later reintroduced from Aldabra. Our results underline that integrating ancient DNA data into a multi-evidence framework substantially enhances the knowledge of the past diversity of island faunas.
Citation
Kehlmaier, C., Graci, E., Ali, J.R., Campbell, P.D., Chapman, S.D., Veerappan, D., Ihlow, F., Jalil, N-E., Pierre-Huyet, L., Samonds, K.E., Vences, M. and Fritz, U. (2023) Ancient DNA elucidates the lost world of western Indian Ocean giant tortoises and reveals a new extinct species from Madagascar. Science Advances, 9 (2), eabq2574. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abq2574
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36630487 (pubmed)
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Journal article
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en
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© 2023 The Authors. Published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science under a Creative Commons License. The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abq2574
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ISSN
2375-2548
EISSN
2375-2548
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Sponsors
The work of C.K. and U.F. was supported by the Senckenberg Society for Nature Research (SGN), Germany. The work of E.G. and U.F. was partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through the project PID2019-105682RA-100/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. The work of V.D. was supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany. F.I. was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG, grant number IH 133/1-1).
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Licence for published version: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International