Arctic-adapted dogs emerged at the Pleistocene-Holocene transition

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

  • Marc de Manuel
  • Vladimir V. Pitulko
  • Lukas Kuderna
  • Laurent A.F. Frantz
  • Jose A. Samaniego Castruita
  • Christian Carøe
  • Peter D. Jordan
  • Elena Y. Pavlova
  • Pavel A. Nikolskiy
  • Aleksei K. Kasparov
  • Varvara V. Ivanova
  • Pontus Skoglund
  • Sanne Eline Wennerberg
  • Mads Peter Heide-Jørgensen
  • Rune Dietz
  • Christian Sonne
  • Love Dalén
  • Greger Larson
  • Lutz Bachmann
  • Øystein Wiig
  • Tomas Marques-Bonet

Although sled dogs are one of the most specialized groups of dogs, their origin and evolution has received much less attention than many other dog groups. We applied a genomic approach to investigate their spatiotemporal emergence by sequencing the genomes of 10 modern Greenland sled dogs, an ~9500-year-old Siberian dog associated with archaeological evidence for sled technology, and an ~33,000-year-old Siberian wolf. We found noteworthy genetic similarity between the ancient dog and modern sled dogs. We detected gene flow from Pleistocene Siberian wolves, but not modern American wolves, to present-day sled dogs. The results indicate that the major ancestry of modern sled dogs traces back to Siberia, where sled dog-specific haplotypes of genes that potentially relate to Arctic adaptation were established by 9500 years ago.

Original languageEnglish
JournalScience (New York, N.Y.)
Volume368
Issue number6498
Pages (from-to)1495-1499
Number of pages5
ISSN0036-8075
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020

ID: 244918730