African climate and geomorphology drive evolution and ghost introgression in sable antelope
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The evolutionary history of African ungulates has been explained largely in the light of Pleistocene climatic oscillations and the way these influenced the distribution of vegetation types, leading to range expansions and/or isolation in refugia. In contrast, comparatively fewer studies have addressed the continent’s environmental heterogeneity and the role played by its geomorphological barriers. In this study, we performed a range-wide analysis of complete mitogenomes of sable antelope (Hippotragus niger) to explore how these different factors may have contributed as drivers of evolution in southcentral Africa. Our results supported two sympatric and deeply divergent mitochondrial lineages in west Tanzanian sables, which can be explained as the result of introgressive hybridization of a mitochondrial ghost lineage from an archaic, as-yet-undefined, congener. Phylogeographical subdivisions into three main lineages suggest that sable diversification may not have been driven solely by climatic events affecting populations differently across a continental scale. Often in interplay with climate, geomorphological features have also clearly shaped the species’ patterns of vicariance, where the East Africa Rift System and the Eastern Arc Mountains acted as geological barriers. Subsequent splits among southern populations may be linked to rearrangements in the Zambezi system, possibly framing the most recent time when the river attained its current drainage profile. This work underlines how the use of comprehensive mitogenomic data sets on a model species with a wide geographical distribution can contribute to a much-enhanced understanding of environmental, geomorphological and evolutionary patterns in Africa throughout the Quaternary.
| Originalsprog | Engelsk |
|---|---|
| Tidsskrift | Molecular Ecology |
| Vol/bind | 31 |
| Udgave nummer | 10 |
| Sider (fra-til) | 2968-2984 |
| Antal sider | 17 |
| ISSN | 0962-1083 |
| DOI | |
| Status | Udgivet - 2022 |
Bibliografisk note
Funding Information:
Angolan samples were exported with permission granted by the Instituto Nacional da Biodiversidade e Áreas de Conservação (INBAC), Ministério do Ambiente da República de Angola (MINAMB). We thank the Ministry of Environment and Tourism of Namibia (MET) for providing sable samples from Namibia, and Andre Uys, Bruce Fivaz, Don Stacey, Marco Silva, Mark Jago, Michel Hasson and Mike Buser for additional samples. We are grateful to the following institutions for having made available historical material: Museo da Caça, Fundação Casa de Bragança, Vila Viçosa, Portugal; Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard, USA; Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, USA; Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC, USA. We are grateful to helicopter pilot Barney O’Hara and veterinarian Dr Pete Morkel, whose outstanding work made possible the collection of fresh samples in Angola, and Vladimir Russo, Genl. João Traguedo, Genl. Afonso Hanga and Abias Huongo, and rangers and sable shepherds from Cangandala NP and Luando Reserve for collaborating in this effort. We acknowledge Brian Huntley, Jeremy Andersen, Richard Estes, Sendi Baptista and Woody Cotterill for fruitful discussions that helped in shaping the manuscript. We also thank Filippo Nardin for coordinating funding, administration and logistics with the Giant Sable Fund. Finally, we are grateful to the editor, Professor Lisette Waits, and to three reviewers for their time and extremely valuable comments that significantly improved the manuscript. This work was partly funded by the ExxonMobil Foundation with a research grant channelled through the Giant Sable Fund. R.G. worked under research contracts from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, FCT (IF/00564/2012 and under DL57/2016/CP1440). This research was conducted within the UNESCO Chair Life on Land.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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