Maternal and Paternal Lineages in Cross-Breeding Bovine Species. Has Wisent a Hybrid Origin?

Abstract

The tribe Bovini comprises cattle and cattle-like species. Reconstructions of their phylogeny have so far been incomplete and have yielded conflicting conclusions about the relationship of American bison and wisent (European bison). We have compared the sequences of three mitochondrial and two Y-chromosomal DNA segments. Mitochondrial DNA indicates that four distinct maternal lineages diverged after an early split-off of the buffalo species, leading to (1) taurine cattle and zebu, (2) wisent, (3) American bison and yak, and (4) banteng, gaur, and gayal, respectively. At a higher level, lineages (1) and (2) and lineages (3) and (4) are probably associated. In contrast, Y-chromosomal sequences indicate a close association of American and European bison, which is in agreement with their morphological similarity, complete fertility of hybrid offspring, and amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) fingerprints of nuclear DNA. One explanation for the anomalous divergence of the mitochondrial DNA from the two bison species is lineage sorting, which implies that two distinct mitochondrial lineages coexisted in the bison-yak branch until the recent divergence of American bison and wisent. Alternatively, the wisent may have emerged by species hybridization initiated by introgression of bison bulls in another ancestral species. This "transpatric" mode of species formation would be consistent with the recent appearance of the wisent in the fossil record without clearly identifiable ancestors.

Past climate changes, population dynamics and the origin of Bison in Europe

“…3). As previously observed with modern sequences [9,21,22] Figure S2). The Bison priscus/bison and yak (P. grunniens) mitogenome lineages separated from a common ancestor dated at ca.…”

Phylogenetic relationships of Malayan gaur with other species of the genus Bos based on cytochrome b gene DNA sequences

“…This is due to the higher variation of the Cyt b gene as compared to that of other functional areas, the fact that it is detected easily and the availability of high-definition phylogenetic information, especially for species level classification (Irwin et al, 1991). In the Bovinae tribe, Cyt b has been used for the determination of phylogenetic relationships of gayal (Ma et al, 2007), investigation of the taxonomic status of kouprey (Hassanin and Ropiquet, 2004), in the study of species identification, molecular sexing and genotyping of gaur and banteng (Rivière-Dobigny et al, 2009) and related species (Verkaar et al, 2004). However, only few studies have used molecular techniques on the Malaysian subspecies of gaur (Brennan, 1995).…”

Multiple paternal origins of domestic cattle revealed by Y-specific interspersed multilocus microsatellites

“…The DNA studies regarding cattle Y-chromosomes are comparatively rare (Verkaar et al, 2004) and have mainly focused on the assessment of male-mediated migration patterns and admixture between B. taurus and B. indicus (Hanotte et al, 2000;Anderung et al, 2007;Edwards et al, 2007b) or the assessment of differences in diversity (Ginja et al, 2009;Kantanen et al, 2009). Recent analyses have identified five polymorphic sites on the cattle Y-chromosome (Gö therströ m et al, 2005), allowing the identification of three clusters (Y1, Y2 and Y3) in contemporary cattle, with Y1 being more frequent in B. taurus from north-western Europe, Y2 being dominant in B. taurus found in southern Europe and Anatolian cattle, and Y3 being exclusive to B. indicus.…”