RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Population and conservation genomics of the world's rarest hyena species, the brown hyena (<em>Parahyena brunnea</em>)
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 170621
DO 10.1101/170621
A1 Michael Westbury
A1 Stefanie Hartmann
A1 Axel Barlow
A1 Ingrid Wiesel
A1 Viyanna Leo
A1 Rebecca Welch
A1 Daniel M Parker
A1 Florian Sicks
A1 Arne Ludwig
A1 Love Dalén
A1 Michael Hofreiter
YR 2017
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/07/31/170621.abstract
AB With an estimated population size of less than 10,000 individuals worldwide, the brown hyena (Parahyaena brunnea) has been listed as ‘near threatened’ by the IUCN. Despite this rank, studies involving DNA analyses of the brown hyena are limited. Little consideration has been focussed towards population structure within the brown hyena, which could provide valuable insights about its evolutionary history and aid in conservation efforts of the species. Here we report both mitochondrial and nuclear genomes of wild-caught brown hyena individuals from across southern Africa. Mitochondrial DNA shows little to no phylogeographic structure, whereas low-coverage nuclear genomes reveal several potential sub-populations. Moreover, we find that brown hyenas harbour the lowest genetic diversity for a species on both the mitochondrial and nuclear level when compared to a number of mammalian species for which such information is currently available. Our data also reveal that at least on the nuclear DNA level, this low diversity could be the result of a continuous and ongoing decline in effective population size that started about one million years ago and dramatically accelerated towards the end of the Pleistocene. Moreover, our findings also show that the correlation between genetic diversity and the perceived risk of extinction is not particularly strong, since many species with higher genetic diversity than the brown hyena are considered to be at greater risk of extinction. Taken together, our results have important implications for the conservation status and conservation approaches of the brown hyena.