Ancient dog introgression into the Iberian wolf genome may have facilitated adaptation to human-dominated landscapes
- Diana Lobo1,2,3,
- Hernán E. Morales4,5,
- Cock Van Oosterhout6,
- José Vicente López-Bao7,
- Pedro Silva1,3,
- Luis Llaneza8,
- Carolina Pacheco1,2,3,
- Diana Castro1,3,
- Germán Hernández-Alonso4,
- George Pacheco4,
- John Archer1,3,
- M. Thomas P. Gilbert4,9,
- Nuno Ferrand1,2,3,10 and
- Raquel Godinho1,2,3,10
- 1CIBIO, Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos, InBIO Laboratório Associado, Campus de Vairão, Universidade do Porto, 4485-661 Vairão, Portugal;
- 2Departamento de Biologia, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade do Porto, 4169-007 Porto, Portugal;
- 3BIOPOLIS, Program in Genomics, Biodiversity and Land Planning, CIBIO, Campus de Vairão, 4485-661 Vairão, Portugal;
- 4Center for Evolutionary Hologenomics, The GLOBE Institute, University of Copenhagen, 1353 Copenhagen, Denmark;
- 5Section for Evolutionary Genomics, The GLOBE Institute, University of Copenhagen, 1353 Copenhagen, Denmark;
- 6School of Environmental Sciences, Norwich Research Park, University of East Anglia, NR4 7TJ Norwich, United Kingdom;
- 7Biodiversity Research Institute (CSIC-Oviedo University-Principality of Asturias) Oviedo University, E-33600 Mieres, Spain;
- 8A.RE.NA, Asesores en Recursos Naturales, 27003 Lugo, Spain;
- 9University Museum, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 7012 Trondheim, Norway;
- 10Centre for Ecological Genomics and Wildlife Conservation, Department of Zoology, University of Johannesburg, 2006 South Africa
Abstract
Understanding how large carnivores respond to increasingly human-dominated landscapes will determine their future adaptive potential. The Iberian wolf (Canis lupus signatus), a gray wolf subspecies endemic to the Iberian Peninsula (Portugal and Spain), has uniquely persisted in human-dominated landscapes, unlike many other wolf populations that faced widespread extinction across Europe during the twentieth century. In this study, we conducted a comprehensive genome-wide analysis of 145 historical and contemporary Iberian wolf samples to investigate whether hybridization with domestic dogs resulted in genetic introgression. We identified a dog-derived block on Chromosome 2 in Iberian wolves, displaying signatures consistent with introgression and high nucleotide similarity among introgressed individuals. Additionally, our estimates place the average timing of introgression between 6100 and 3000 years ago, with low sequence divergence to dogs from the Iberian Peninsula suggesting a single local origin for the hybridization event. Using forward genetic simulations, we show that the introgressed haplotype is most likely being maintained in Iberian wolves by selection. The introgressed dog variants are located within the MAST4 gene, which has been linked to neurological disorders, including cognitive and motor developmental delays, hinting at a potential role in cognitive behavior in Iberian wolves. This study uncovers a case of putative adaptive introgression from domestic dogs into wolves, offering new insights into wild canids’ adaptation to human-dominated landscapes.
Footnotes
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[Supplemental material is available for this article.]
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Article published online before print. Article, supplemental material, and publication date are at https://www.genome.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gr.279093.124.
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Freely available online through the Genome Research Open Access option.
- Received March 22, 2024.
- Accepted February 6, 2025.
This article, published in Genome Research, is available under a Creative Commons License (Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International), as described at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
