What is it about?
The blue buck went extinct by hunting in 1800, and it was never know to exist in high numbers in its native South Africa. Using ancient DNA extracted from a horn core in the collection of the Museum of Evolution in Uppsala, we reconstructed the complete mitogenome of the blue buck. This allowed to better determine the relationships with its most closely related species and time the divergence of the blue buck from the sable antelope to 2.8 million years ago. Contradicting previous finds, the roan antelope is more distantly related.
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Why is it important?
We determine the relationships between the blue buck and its closest relatives, and the timing of their separation. This is important to improve our knowledge of a species that went extinct before there was a change to study it in depth.
Perspectives
The use of high throughput sequencing and an iterative mapping procedure allowed the reconstruction of a high-quality, deeply covered mitochondrial genome. This allowed us to avoid the limitations of previous studies that only studied short fragments with limited phylogenetic information, and provided better estimates of the parameters involved.
Gonçalo Themudo
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Phylogenetic position of the extinct blue antelope, Hippotragus leucophaeus (Pallas, 1766) (Bovidae: Hippotraginae), based on complete mitochondrial genomes, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, July 2017, Oxford University Press (OUP),
DOI: 10.1093/zoolinnean/zlx034.
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