Grey wolf genomic history reveals a dual ancestry of dogs

Abstract

The grey wolf (Canis lupus) was the first species to give rise to a domestic population, and they remained widespread throughout the last Ice Age when many other large mammal species went extinct. Little is known, however, about the history and possible extinction of past wolf populations or when and where the wolf progenitors of the present-day dog lineage (Canis familiaris) lived1–8. Here we analysed 72 ancient wolf genomes spanning the last 100,000 years from Europe, Siberia and North America. We found that wolf populations were highly connected throughout the Late Pleistocene, with levels of differentiation an order of magnitude lower than they are today. This population connectivity allowed us to detect natural selection across the time series, including rapid fixation of mutations in the gene IFT88 40,000–30,000 years ago. We show that dogs are overall more closely related to ancient wolves from eastern Eurasia than to those from western Eurasia, suggesting a domestication process in the east. However, we also found that dogs in the Near East and Africa derive up to half of their ancestry from a distinct population related to modern southwest Eurasian wolves, reflecting either an independent domestication process or admixture from local wolves. None of the analysed ancient wolf genomes is a direct match for either of these dog ancestries, meaning that the exact progenitor populations remain to be located.

From high masked to high realized genetic load in inbred Scandinavian wolves

“…Wolves were once abundant and widespread over the northern Hemisphere. Analyses of ancient wolf genomes indicate that connectivity between wolf populations across continents was high, resembling panmixia, throughout Late Pleistocene (Bergström, 2022); indeed, the dispersal capacity of wolves is significant (Mech, 2020). Contemporary populations in Eurasia share a common ancestry that can be traced back to unidirectional gene flow from Siberia during the Last Glacial Maximum, although the survival of deep local ancestries argues against local extinctions during this process (Bergström, 2022;Loog et al, 2020;Ramos-Madrigal et al, 2021).…”

“…Analyses of ancient wolf genomes indicate that connectivity between wolf populations across continents was high, resembling panmixia, throughout Late Pleistocene (Bergström, 2022); indeed, the dispersal capacity of wolves is significant (Mech, 2020). Contemporary populations in Eurasia share a common ancestry that can be traced back to unidirectional gene flow from Siberia during the Last Glacial Maximum, although the survival of deep local ancestries argues against local extinctions during this process (Bergström, 2022;Loog et al, 2020;Ramos-Madrigal et al, 2021). There are thus reasons to believe that the high masked load we detected in Finland and Russia, and in immigrants to Scandinavia, was characteristic to many wolf populations before human persecution in the last centuries led to rapid and significant population declines and fragmented distributions (e.g.…”

The Role of Socialisation in the Taming and Management of Wild Dingoes by Australian Aboriginal People

“…The Aboriginal–dingo relationship as presently conceived has implications for the current understanding of the original domestication of dogs from the Eurasian grey wolf—or an extinct sub-population(s) of these wild canids, as is presently believed to have been the case [ 175 ]. Current evidence suggests the earliest domesticated dogs can be traced back to 16–14 thousand years (ka) ago in the archaeological record [ 176 , 177 ], and more contentiously up to ~40–30 ka ago on the basis of genetic data [ 178 ] and morphological analyses [ 40 , 41 , 179 ].…”

“…Owing to the larger size of wolves it probably would have been necessary for Late Pleistocene Eurasian foragers to be more severe about culling captive wolf pups that persistently responded to this treatment with defensive aggression (i.e., kill or abandon those that could not be habituated to rough-handling by children), thus actively selecting for docility and other people-friendly traits [ 33 , 34 ]. On the other hand, it is possible that the nearest ancestor of the dog was from eastern Asia, where the wolves are generally smaller and less powerful than C. lupus in western Eurasia ([ 185 , 186 , 187 ], see also [ 33 , 34 , 175 ]).…”

“…In addition, human-induced genetic changes are more likely to have occurred if the wolf population was situated in a glacial refugium or other biogeographical contexts that brought wolves and humans closer together, isolated the former from a reproductive standpoint, and kept the wolves subject to human selection pressures. As dogs first appear in the archaeological record during and immediately after the Last Glacial Maximum (26.5–19 ka ago [ 188 ])—and seem to derive from East Asian wolves somewhere south of Siberia proper [ 175 ]—it is likely that this process occurred within the vicinity of modern-day China. The earliest dogs could possibly have arisen from the practice of adopting pups from a wolf population with such a uniquely close human association.…”