TY - JOUR
AU1 - Moodley,, Yoshan
AU2 - Westbury, Michael, V
AU3 - Russo, Isa-Rita, M
AU4 - Gopalakrishnan,, Shyam
AU5 - Rakotoarivelo,, Andrinajoro
AU6 - Olsen,, Remi-Andre
AU7 - Prost,, Stefan
AU8 - Tunstall,, Tate
AU9 - Ryder, Oliver, A
AU1 - Dalén,, Love
AU1 - Bruford, Michael, W
AB - Abstract Africa’s black (Diceros bicornis) and white (Ceratotherium simum) rhinoceros are closely related sister-taxa that evolved highly divergent obligate browsing and grazing feeding strategies. Although their precursor species D. praecox and C. mauritanicum appear in the fossil record ∼5.2 million years ago (Ma), by 4 Ma both were still mixed feeders, and were even spatio-temporally sympatric at several Pliocene sites in what is today Africa’s Rift Valley. Here, we ask whether or not D. praecox and C. mauritanicum were reproductively isolated when they came into Pliocene secondary contact. We sequenced and de novo assembled the first annotated black rhinoceros reference genome, and compared it with available genomes of other black and white rhinoceros. We show that ancestral gene flow between D. praecox and C. mauritanicum ceased sometime between 3.3 and 4.1 Ma, despite conventional methods for the detection of gene flow from whole genome data returning false positive signatures of recent interspecific migration due to incomplete lineage sorting. We propose that ongoing Pliocene genetic exchange, for up to 2 million years after initial divergence, could have potentially hindered the development of obligate feeding strategies until both species were fully reproductively isolated, but that the more severe and shifting palaeoclimate of the early Pleistocene was likely the ultimate driver of ecological specialisation in African rhinoceros. Reproductive isolation, ancestral gene flow, incomplete lineage sorting, rhinoceros, Pliocene, genomes This content is only available as a PDF. Author notes Yoshan Moodley, Michael V. Westbury, equally contributing first authors © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - Interspecific gene flow and the evolution of specialisation in black and white rhinoceros
JF - Molecular Biology and Evolution
DO - 10.1093/molbev/msaa148
DA - 2006-07-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/interspecific-gene-flow-and-the-evolution-of-specialisation-in-black-ga4L9AF0su
DP - DeepDyve
ER -