Journal Articles Nature Year : 2021

Late Quaternary dynamics of Arctic biota from ancient environmental genomics

Yucheng Wang
Mikkel Winther Pedersen
Inger Greve Alsos
Bianca de Sanctis
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Fernando Racimo
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Ana Prohaska
Eric Coissac
Hannah Lois Owens
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Marie Kristine Føreid Merkel
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Antonio Fernandez-Guerra
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Alexandra Rouillard
Youri Lammers
Adriana Alberti
France Denoeud
Daniel Money
Anthony Ruter
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Hugh Mccoll
Nicolaj Krog Larsen
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Anna Cherezova
Mary Edwards
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Grigory Fedorov
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James Haile
Lasse Vinner
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Thorfinn Sand Korneliussen
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David Beilman
Anders Bjørk
Jialu Cao
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Christoph Dockter
Julie Esdale
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Galina Gusarova
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Kristian Kjeldsen
Jan Mangerud
Jeffrey Rasic
Birgitte Skadhauge
John Inge Svendsen
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Alexei Tikhonov
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Patrick Wincker
Yingchun Xing
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Yubin Zhang
Duane Froese
Carsten Rahbek
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David Bravo Nogues
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Philip Holden
Neil Edwards
Richard Durbin
David Meltzer
Kurt Kjær
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Per Möller
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Eske Willerslev
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Abstract

Abstract During the last glacial–interglacial cycle, Arctic biotas experienced substantial climatic changes, yet the nature, extent and rate of their responses are not fully understood 1–8 . Here we report a large-scale environmental DNA metagenomic study of ancient plant and mammal communities, analysing 535 permafrost and lake sediment samples from across the Arctic spanning the past 50,000 years. Furthermore, we present 1,541 contemporary plant genome assemblies that were generated as reference sequences. Our study provides several insights into the long-term dynamics of the Arctic biota at the circumpolar and regional scales. Our key findings include: (1) a relatively homogeneous steppe–tundra flora dominated the Arctic during the Last Glacial Maximum, followed by regional divergence of vegetation during the Holocene epoch; (2) certain grazing animals consistently co-occurred in space and time; (3) humans appear to have been a minor factor in driving animal distributions; (4) higher effective precipitation, as well as an increase in the proportion of wetland plants, show negative effects on animal diversity; (5) the persistence of the steppe–tundra vegetation in northern Siberia enabled the late survival of several now-extinct megafauna species, including the woolly mammoth until 3.9 ± 0.2 thousand years ago (ka) and the woolly rhinoceros until 9.8 ± 0.2 ka; and (6) phylogenetic analysis of mammoth environmental DNA reveals a previously unsampled mitochondrial lineage. Our findings highlight the power of ancient environmental metagenomics analyses to advance understanding of population histories and long-term ecological dynamics.

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hal-03431961 , version 1 (17-11-2021)

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Yucheng Wang, Mikkel Winther Pedersen, Inger Greve Alsos, Bianca de Sanctis, Fernando Racimo, et al.. Late Quaternary dynamics of Arctic biota from ancient environmental genomics. Nature, 2021, 598 (7882), pp.634-640. ⟨10.1038/s41586-021-04016-x⟩. ⟨hal-03431961⟩
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