Phylogeny of Y chromosomes from bovine species

Abstract

The Bovini tribe contains domestic and wild cattle-like species, several of which are cross-fertile. We present a completely resolved Y-chromosomal phylogeny, which is better in agreement with autosomal phylogeny, morphological data, cross-fertility and estimates of divergence times than mitochondrial data. The tree links Bos grunniens (yak) to Bison, so the commonly accepted Bos genus is not monophyletic. Therefore, we advocate the term Poephagus as designation of yak. This work illustrates the resolving power of Y-chromosomal variation for cladistic studies of closely related species.

A paradox revealed: karyotype evolution in the four-horned antelope occurs by tandem fusion (Mammalia, Bovidae, Tetracerus quadricornis)

“…As evident from Fig. 3, the Tetracerus X chromosome is of the Bubalus type (Iannuzzi and Di Meo 1995;Hassanane et al 1998;Nguyen et al 2008-see also Robinson et al 1998) 2007;Nijman et al 2008;Hassanin et al 2009;Ropiquet et al 2009), corresponds to the primitive state for Bovinae (see below). The microdissected BTA Xq painting probe (approximately Xq3.6-qter) hybridises to the terminal part of Tetracerus Xqdist with the proximal region of the TQU X chromosome showing strong signal to BTA Xp (approximately Xp2.1-pter).…”

“…The matrix of cytogenetic characters provided in Table S1 was derived from that published in Nguyen et al (2008). The character-state transformations were mapped to a consensus of published trees based on mitochondrial and nuclear markers (Hassanin and Douzery 1999a, b;Ropiquet 2004, 2007;Willows-Munro et al 2005;Hassanin 2005, 2006;Nijman et al 2008;Hassanin et al 2009;Ropiquet et al 2009). We examined the chromosomal characters relevant to the placement of Tetracerus by analysing the evolutionary chromosomal transformations using the parsimony-based computer programme MacClade 4.06 (Maddison and Maddison 2003).…”

Patterns of sexual size dimorphism in cattle breeds support Rensch’s rule

“…Although the direct ancestor of domestic cows, i.e., the aurochs (Bos taurus primigenius Bojanus, 1827), is already extinct, there is still the wisent (=the European bison Bison bonasus (Linnaeus, 1758)) which represents the sister form of the aurochs according to sequences of mitochondrial genes Ropiquet 2004, 2007). Nevertheless, affinities of genetic markers on Y-chromosome of the American bison (Bison bison (Linnaeus, 1758)) support the hybrid origin of the wisent (Nijman et al 2008). Moreover, there are multiple lineages of domestic bovids closely related to cows, e.g., the yak (Bos grunniens grunniens Linnaeus, 1766), the Bali cattle (Bos javanicus d'Alton, 1823), the gayal (Bos frontalis frontalis Lambert, 1804) and the Asian water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis (Linnaeus, 1758)), each standing for an independent domestication event Ropiquet 2004, 2007;Nijman et al 2008) that may serve as a control group for testing generality of the results.…”

Two reciprocally monophyletic mtDNA lineages elucidate the taxonomic status of Mountain gazelles (Gazella gazella)

“…We are aware of the limitations of species delineations on the basis of mitochondrial markers only (e.g. Funk & Omland, 2003;Verkaar et al, 2004;Nijman et al, 2008), and the limited number of aligned nucleotide positions (213 bp control region, 360 bp cytochrome b) used in our analysis. Undoubtedly, more (nuclear) markers will be needed to further clarify the species status of the lineages described here.…”