Mitochondrial DNA data indicate an introduction through Mainland Southeast Asia for Australian dingoes and Polynesian domestic dogs

Abstract

In the late stages of the global dispersal of dogs, dingoes appear in the Australian archaeological record 3500 years BP, and dogs were one of three domesticates brought with the colonization of Polynesia, but the introduction routes to this region remain unknown. This also relates to questions about human history, such as to what extent the Polynesian culture was introduced with the Austronesian expansion from Taiwan or adopted en route, and whether pre-Neolithic Australia was culturally influenced by the surrounding Neolithic world. We investigate these questions by mapping the distribution of the mtDNA founder haplotypes for dingoes (A29) and ancient Polynesian dogs (Arc1 and Arc2) in samples across Southern East Asia (n = 424) and Island Southeast Asia (n = 219). All three haplotypes were found in South China, Mainland Southeast Asia and Indonesia but absent in Taiwan and the Philippines, and the mtDNA diversity among dingoes indicates an introduction to Australia 4600–18 300 years BP. These results suggest that Australian dingoes and Polynesian dogs originate from dogs introduced to Indonesia via Mainland Southeast Asia before the Neolithic, and not from Taiwan together with the Austronesian expansion. This underscores the complex origins of Polynesian culture and the isolation from Neolithic influence of the pre-Neolithic Australian culture.

Chicken domestication: an updated perspective based on mitochondrial genomes

“…Thus, the Pacific lineages belonging to haplogroup D are most likely to originate from Southeast Asia. In support of this, a substantial introduction of domesticates from Southeast Asia into Pacific is revealed by analyzing mtDNA data of the dog (Oskarsson et al, 2012), pig (Lum et al, 2006;Larson et al, 2007Larson et al, , 2010 and even the commensal rat (Matisoo-Smith and Robins, 2004). Consequently, Southeast Asia likely served as the homeland of most domesticates spreading to the Pacific.…”

Conservation implications for dingoes from the maternal and paternal genome: Multiple populations, dog introgression, and demography

“…A lack of intermediate haplotypes despite broad geographical sampling suggests that the observed pattern of population structure is due to historical events. Previous studies did not observe the presence of population structure in dingoes, due to restricted sampling of the mitochondrial control region and limited geographic sampling across the Australian continent (Oskarsson et al., 2011; Sacks et al., 2013; Savolainen et al., 2004). …”

“…Demographic modeling on the entire dingo dataset depicts a population expansion approximately 3,000–8,000 years BP (Figure 11). Ethnographic and molecular dating suggests dingoes arrived in Australia prior to 5,000 years BP (Cairns & Wilton, 2016; Fillios & Taçon, 2016; Oskarsson et al., 2011). It should be noted that uncertainty in the demographic modeling makes it difficult to discern the approximate arrival time of dingoes or pinpoint when range expansions occurred.…”

“…Mitochondrial networks were created for the concatenated diagnostic region and control region separately. Control region data were analyzed separately to allow incorporation of and comparison to the existing dingo control region dataset (Oskarsson et al., 2011; Sacks et al., 2013; Savolainen et al., 2004). As the control region is not phylogenetically informative in dingoes, it was not included in the mitochondrial diagnostic region analysis (Cairns & Wilton, 2016).…”

“…In 2016, Cairns and Wilton identified the presence of at least two dingo lineages, southeastern (SE) and northwestern (NW), in Australia with a pattern of geographical subdivision. Early studies using mitochondrial DNA were unable to elucidate continent‐wide biogeographic patterns, as they restricted genetic sampling to the mitochondrial control region (Oskarsson et al., 2011; Savolainen et al., 2004). Y chromosome studies either had samples from mostly Western Australia or mostly eastern Australia, and differences in genetic marker sampling made it difficult to compare datasets (Ardalan et al., 2012; Sacks et al., 2013).…”