Complete Mitochondrial Genomes of New Zealand’s First Dogs

Abstract

Dogs accompanied people in their migrations across the Pacific Ocean and ultimately reached New Zealand, which is the southern-most point of their oceanic distribution, around the beginning of the fourteenth century AD. Previous ancient DNA analyses of mitochondrial control region sequences indicated the New Zealand dog population included two lineages. We sequenced complete mitochondrial genomes of fourteen dogs from the colonisation era archaeological site of Wairau Bar and found five closely-related haplotypes. The limited number of mitochondrial lineages present at Wairau Bar suggests that the founding population may have comprised only a few dogs; or that the arriving dogs were closely related. For populations such as that at Wairau Bar, which stemmed from relatively recent migration events, control region sequences have insufficient power to address questions about population structure and founding events. Sequencing mitogenomes provided the opportunity to observe sufficient diversity to discriminate between individuals that would otherwise be assigned the same haplotype and to clarify their relationships with each other. Our results also support the proposition that at least one dispersal of dogs into the Pacific was via a south-western route through Indonesia.

The Pacific Rat Race to Easter Island: Tracking the Prehistoric Dispersal of Rattus exulans Using Ancient Mitochondrial Genomes

“…Rat specimens retrieved from Easter Island provided greater DNA preservation than all other surveyed locations in central East Polynesia. This is consistent with previous commensal research that has recovered complete ancient mitochondrial genomes from another temperate location in the Pacific, i.e., New Zealand (Greig et al, 2015).…”

“…Recent applications of complete mitochondrial sequencing in the Pacific have documented an increase in molecular resolution that can be utilized for fine-scale phylogenetic analyses (Miao et al, 2013;Duggan et al, 2014;Greig et al, 2015). This is of particular importance in Pacific research, as multiple population bottlenecks, the result of successive island migrations, may have severely reduced genetic variation in study species.…”

Dispersal, Isolation, and Interaction in the Islands of Polynesia: A Critical Review of Archaeological and Genetic Evidence

“…Over the past decade there have been a number of new genetic studies of plants and animals known to have been transferred across the Pacific, including the sweet potato [121], bottle gourd [122][123][124], paper mulberry [125,126], breadfruit [127], pigs [45], and dogs [128].…”

Biological Anthropology in the Indo-Pacific Region: New Approaches to Age-Old Questions

“…domesticated dog was introduced to the Pacific (Greig et al, 2015;Oskarsson et al, 2011;Pang et al, 2009). In addition, both China and New Guinea are centres of independent plant domestication (Denham, 2011;Fuller et al, 2009;Fuller et al, 2014;Gross and Zhao, 2014;Perrier et al, 2011;Yen, 1991).…”

“…This collaborative approach involved multiple lines of biological research including palaeopathological , aDNA (Knapp et al, 2012), isotopic analyses (Kinaston et al, 2013c), and facial approximation (Hayes et al, 2012). The biological evidence was combined with analyses of material culture (Walter et al, 2006) and archaeozoological research relating to commensal and native species (Greig et al, 2015;Jacomb et al, 2014;Wilmshurst et al, 2008). The vast amount of data emerging from Wairau Bar means that research is ongoing, and there is still much to be discovered.…”