Genomic and morphological analysis reveals long-term mammoth hybridization in British Columbia, Canada

作者：Marianne Dehasque, Tom van der Valk, Juan Camilo Chacón-Duque, Laura Termes, Petter Larsson, Hannah M. Moots, Florentine Tubbesing, Juliana Larsdotter, Gonzalo Oteo‐García, Kelsey Moreland, Hans van Essen, Victoria M. Arbour, Grant Keddie, Michael P. Richards, David Díez‐del‐Molino, Peter D. Heintzman, Adrian M. Lister, Love Dalén · 发表于：Biology Letters · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1098/rsbl.2025.0305 · 被引用次数：3 · 研究领域：Genetic and phenotypic traits in livestock

Climate changes profoundly impact species distributions and can drastically alter dynamics between formerly isolated taxa. The evolution of mammoths within North America was characterized by repeated cycles of dispersal and putative gene flow between woolly and Columbian mammoths. However, as genome-wide studies on mammoths have predominantly focused on Siberia, the consequences of these North American range shifts remain unclear. Here, we generated genome-wide and morphological data for two Late Pleistocene mammoth molars from British Columbia, Canada (BC), and jointly analysed these with previously published data. Our genome-wide analysis ( n = 16) revealed gene flow between woolly and Columbian mammoths that would have gone undiscovered based on morphological ( n = 48) and mitochondrial analysis ( n = 124) alone. Consistent with their hybrid nature, our analyses suggest that these two BC mammoths had elevated genomic diversity. Our results highlight the importance of combining data types to reconstruct past evolutionary events. These findings demonstrate how the geographical range expansion of woolly mammoths resulted in long-term hybridization with local Columbian mammoths and enhance our understanding of the genomic and morphological consequences of climate-mediated dispersal.