Skip to main content
bioRxiv
  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • ALERTS / RSS
Advanced Search
New Results

Testing the Effect of the Toba Volcanic Eruption on Population Sizes in Worldwide Mammal Species

View ORCID ProfileNicole S. Torosin, View ORCID ProfileJennifer A. Raff, View ORCID ProfileM. Geoffrey Hayes
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.06.028050
Nicole S. Torosin
1Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Nicole S. Torosin
  • For correspondence: nicole.torosin@rutgers.edu
Jennifer A. Raff
2Department of Anthropology, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Jennifer A. Raff
M. Geoffrey Hayes
3Center for Genetic Medicine, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL 60611
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for M. Geoffrey Hayes
  • Abstract
  • Full Text
  • Info/History
  • Metrics
  • Supplementary material
  • Preview PDF
Loading

Abstract

The volcanic eruption of Toba in northern Sumatra at 71 kyBP (±5 kyBP) emitted sulfur gas and deposited thick layers of dust throughout the surrounding region. It is thought to have had a significant and dramatic cooling impact on the paleoclimate worldwide. Ambrose [1] conjectured this to be the cause of the contemporaneous (50-100 kyBP) population bottleneck observed in humans. We hypothesize that a volcanic winter of sufficient magnitude to cause a population bottleneck in humans would similarly affect other mammals. To test this hypothesis, we estimated pairwise mismatch distributions using mtDNA control region sequences of 28 mammal species archived on NCBI to assess whether each species underwent a population bottleneck. For any species fitting the sudden expansion model, we estimated the timing of the bottleneck and compared it to the date range of the Toba eruption. Only 3 of the 28 species show evidence of rapid population expansion overlapping in time with the Toba eruption. Therefore, the hypothesis that the volcanic winter triggered by the Toba eruption caused a significant bottleneck impacting mammal species worldwide is not supported by mitochondrial evidence. Our results question the hypothesis that the Toba eruption contributed to the bottleneck observed in humans at this time.

Footnotes

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
Back to top
PreviousNext
Posted April 07, 2020.
Download PDF

Supplementary Material

Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about bioRxiv.

NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Testing the Effect of the Toba Volcanic Eruption on Population Sizes in Worldwide Mammal Species
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from bioRxiv
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the bioRxiv website.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
Testing the Effect of the Toba Volcanic Eruption on Population Sizes in Worldwide Mammal Species
Nicole S. Torosin, Jennifer A. Raff, M. Geoffrey Hayes
bioRxiv 2020.04.06.028050; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.06.028050
Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo Google logo LinkedIn logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
Testing the Effect of the Toba Volcanic Eruption on Population Sizes in Worldwide Mammal Species
Nicole S. Torosin, Jennifer A. Raff, M. Geoffrey Hayes
bioRxiv 2020.04.06.028050; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.06.028050

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Subject Area

  • Evolutionary Biology
Subject Areas
All Articles
  • Animal Behavior and Cognition (3590)
  • Biochemistry (7562)
  • Bioengineering (5503)
  • Bioinformatics (20752)
  • Biophysics (10308)
  • Cancer Biology (7964)
  • Cell Biology (11625)
  • Clinical Trials (138)
  • Developmental Biology (6598)
  • Ecology (10177)
  • Epidemiology (2065)
  • Evolutionary Biology (13589)
  • Genetics (9530)
  • Genomics (12830)
  • Immunology (7917)
  • Microbiology (19525)
  • Molecular Biology (7651)
  • Neuroscience (42025)
  • Paleontology (307)
  • Pathology (1254)
  • Pharmacology and Toxicology (2195)
  • Physiology (3261)
  • Plant Biology (7028)
  • Scientific Communication and Education (1294)
  • Synthetic Biology (1949)
  • Systems Biology (5422)
  • Zoology (1113)