Ancient DNA of Guinea Pigs (Cavia spp.) Indicates a Probable New Center of Domestication and Pathways of Global Distribution

Abstract

Guinea pigs (Cavia spp.) have a long association with humans. From as early as 10,000 years ago they were a wild food source. Later, domesticated Cavia porcellus were dispersed well beyond their native range through pre-Columbian exchange networks and, more recently, widely across the globe. Here we present 46 complete mitogenomes of archaeological guinea pigs from sites in Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, the Caribbean, Belgium and the United States to elucidate their evolutionary history, origins and paths of dispersal. our results indicate an independent centre of domestication of Cavia in the eastern colombian Highlands. We identify a peruvian origin for the initial introduction of domesticated guinea pigs (Cavia porcellus) beyond South America into the caribbean. We also demonstrate that peru was the probable source of the earliest known guinea pigs transported, as part of the exotic pet trade, to both Europe and the southeastern United States. Finally, we identify a modern reintroduction of guinea pigs to Puerto Rico, where local inhabitants use them for food. This research demonstrates that the natural and cultural history of guinea pigs is more complex than previously known and has implications for other studies regarding regional to global-scale studies of mammal domestication, translocation, and distribution. The use of ancient DNA (aDNA) in studies of animal domestication and subsequent translocation has radically improved our ability to identify spatially, temporally, and culturally variable processes of domestication and the diversity of social networks behind domestic species distribution (e.g. 1,2). Increasingly, aDNA studies are revising previous assumptions of geographically conscripted animal domestication and dispersal events to reveal multiple centers, timings, and processes of domestication of the world's most prominent domestic animals (e.g. pigs, chickens, cattle, dogs 3-6). Because domestic animals are exemplar proxies for investigating past human migration and interaction, understanding long-term, diachronic patterns of when and where species domestication and

Patterns of dietary diversity in Holocene north-west South America: new insights from Bayesian stable isotope mixing models

“…The negligible mean calorie contribution from C 3 and C 3 /C 4 plant-eating animals (∼4 per cent) to initial Late Holocene human diets needs further clarification, as this period is considered to be key in the domestication and more intensive exploitation of certain species (e.g. guinea pigs; Lord et al 2020). Indeed, the probability distribution plots (Figure 5) show that C 3 and C 3 /C 4 plant-eating animals contributed up to 20 per cent of some individuals' calories, revealing a slightly higher importance of animal protein.…”

“…The alternative model (FLH2) hypothesises a similar C 4 and C 3 plant calorie contribution to human diet, but the resulting Bayesian mixing modelling (C 3 plants∼C 3 animals) suggests an extremely high contribution of C 3 plants (∼93 per cent) to Muisca diets, implying an unrealistic dietary scenario. Likewise, the zooarchaeological evidence shows that a diverse range of faunal species was exploited during this time (Delgado et al 2014;Lord et al 2020), suggesting that animal protein played an important role in human diets. Yet the Bayesian mixing models indicate a smaller average calorie contribution from C 3 and C 3 /C 4 plant-eating animals (3.6 and 3.0 per cent, respectively) during the final Late Holocene compared with earlier periods.…”

Morfometría y faneroptica de subpoblaciones de cobayos (Cavia porcellus) nativos del altiplano sur ecuatoriano

“…El origen del Cobayo yace desde la antigüedad, citándose restos arqueológicos de cobayos silvestres, encontrados en Colombia, Perú y Chile y que datan entre los 9.000 a 8.000 años antes de Cristo (AC), siendo de estos hallazgos los más antiguos, los encontrados en la Sabana Bogotana de Tequendama en Colombia. Según algunos investigadores, el Cobayo constituye el roedor que más tempranamente fue domesticado, entre los 6.000 a 2.000 AC [8,17,18].…”

“…Estudios recientes basados en secuencias de mitogenoma proponen la existencia de dos núcleos principales de domesticación, muy probablemente originados con especies diferentes: el primero ubicado en Colombia basado en el Cavia anolaimae, de no muy lejano reconocimiento y otro núcleo, éste de origen andino central concentrado en el sur de Perú y norte de Chile, basado en el Cavia tschudii [18]; sin embargo, con el descubrimiento en la región central de Ecuador de la especie Cavia patzelti, no sería extraño que haya existido un tercer núcleo o proceso de domesticación [9]. La población total real de Cobayos en Sudamérica, según censos agropecuarios entre 2013 y 2017 superan a los 100 millones (mill) de animales en Latinoamérica, distribuidos en Perú 65 mill [14], Ecuador 47 mill [13], Bolivia 3 mill [1] y Colombia 2,3 mill [10]; no obstante, la población en la actualidad se estiman serian de en Perú 17,38 mill, Ecuador 21,0 mill, Bolivia 0,647 mill y Colombia 1,234 mill de animales, de acuerdo a estimaciones de asociaciones no oficiales [20].…”

A systematic review of agouti (Dasyproctidae: Dasyprocta) records from the pre‐1492 Lesser Antilles: New perspectives on an introduced commensal

“…, domestication (Kimura et al, 2016;Lord et al, 2018Lord et al, , 2020, circum-Caribbean interaction and exchange (Lord et al, 2018(Lord et al, , 2020Rabinow et al in preparation), and island ecology (Giovas et al, 2016;Misretta, 2019;Oswald et al, 2020). Recent systematic reviews of the archeological distribution and context for several non-native (i.e., those lacking a [sub]fossil record prior to human colonization) commensals in the Caribbean have provided an important foundation for advancing such studies (e.g., Giovas, 2018Giovas, , 2019aGiovas, , 2019bGrouard et al, 2013;LeFebvre & deFrance, 2014;Wing, 2012).…”