Complex history of dog (Canis familiaris) origins and translocations in the Pacific revealed by ancient mitogenomes

Abstract

Archaeological evidence suggests that dogs were introduced to the islands of Oceania via Island Southeast Asia around 3,300 years ago, and reached the eastern islands of Polynesia by the fourteenth century AD. This dispersal is intimately tied to human expansion, but the involvement of dogs in Pacific migrations is not well understood. Our analyses of seven new complete ancient mitogenomes and five partial mtDNA sequences from archaeological dog specimens from Mainland and Island Southeast Asia and the Pacific suggests at least three dog dispersal events into the region, in addition to the introduction of dingoes to Australia. We see an early introduction of dogs to Island Southeast Asia, which does not appear to extend into the islands of Oceania. A shared haplogroup identified between Iron Age Taiwanese dogs, terminal-Lapita and post-Lapita dogs suggests that at least one dog lineage was introduced to Near Oceania by or as the result of interactions with Austronesian language speakers associated with the Lapita Cultural Complex. We did not find any evidence that these dogs were successfully transported beyond New Guinea. Finally, we identify a widespread dog clade found across the Pacific, including the islands of Polynesia, which likely suggests a post-Lapita dog introduction from southern Island Southeast Asia.

Evidence for Early European Neolithic Dog Dispersal: New Data on Southeastern European Subfossil Dogs from the Prehistoric and Antiquity Ages

“…Although there is a high frequency of clade B in modern dogs, in ancient samples until now these sub-haplogroups have been observed very rarely, with a frequency of about 1%. There is one sample in France and Turkmenistan, and there are a few samples from Southeastern Asia and Oceania [13,15,17]. In our sample sets, the B1 sub-clade has a high frequency (over 20%).…”

“…Sequences were analyzed by polymorphic SNPs, and haplogroups were determined according to [10,42], as well as the MitoToolPy program [43] () with reference sequence EU789787 [9]. The phylogenetic analysis was based on the archaeological dog samples used in this study, as well as on all available ancient DNA dog sequences in GenBank and the Dome tree [5,6,12,13,15,16,17,22,31,32,33,44] (Table S3). Ancient and recent wolves [6,22,24,25,26,45], as well as the recent Bulgarian native dog [46], (Table S3) were characterized using network analysis NETWORK 4.5.1.6 (Fluxus Technology Ltd.; available at ).…”

“…For example, pre-Columbian American dogs were identical to East-Eurasian (Siberian) dogs, which are nowadays mixed with West-Eurasian dogs, after the Age of Discovery (15th century) [5,6,12]. Similarly, in the Pacific, including the islands of Polynesia, a post-Lapita dog introduction from southern Island Southeast Asia has been suggested [12,13].…”

Human mediated translocation of Pacific paper mulberry [Broussonetia papyrifera (L.) L’Hér. ex Vent. (Moraceae)]: Genetic evidence of dispersal routes in Remote Oceania

“…New sequencing technologies such as Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) have been used to study the dispersal patterns of other species through Remote Oceania, such as rats [44] and dogs [45, 46], which are well studied animals whose reference genomes have already been published. Until recently, for NGS analyses, the use of a reference genome was essential and NGS applied to herbarium samples is currently under development [47, 48, 49] and focused mainly on well-studied plant species.…”

“…exulans ) mitochondrial DNA from archaeological bones suggests an expansion from the Austral Islands to Rapa Nui [42]. Unfortunately, other studies on commensal animal or plant species, such as chickens [71], dogs [45, 46] or taro [72], either do not provide sufficient detail on the genetic diversity within Remote Oceania to infer dispersal routes, or the species did not reach the islands of Marginal Polynesia, such as chickens in New Zealand, or dogs on Rapa Nui. In our data, we find contemporary genotypes from Rapa Nui derived directly from one genotype found on Hiva Oa in the Marquesas (Fig 3).…”