All,
Without having read the actual paper, I already know, from the following abstract, that it will be a “must-read” for people interested in matters of Eurasian Late Pleistocene biogeography, and more.
Jacques Cinq-Mars
Hofreiter, Michael, David Serre, Nadin Rohland, Gernot Rabeder, Doris Nagel, Nicholas Conard, Susanne Münzel, and Svante Pääbo. 2004. Lack of phylogeography in European mammals before the last glaciation. PNAS 101(35):12963-12968.
Abstract:
In many extant animal and plant species in Europe and North America a correlation exists between the geographical location of individuals and the genetic relatedness of the mitochondrial (mt) DNA sequences that they carry. Here, we analyze mtDNA sequences from cave bears, brown bears, cave hyenas, and Neandertals in Europe before the last glacial maximum and fail to detect any phylogeographic patterns similar to those observed in extant species. We suggest that at the beginning of the last glacial maximum, little phylogeographic patterns existed in European mammals over most of their geographical ranges and that current phylogeographic patterns are transient relics of the last glaciation. Cycles of retreat of species in refugia during glacial periods followed by incomplete dispersal from one refugium into other refugia during interglacial periods is likely to be responsible for the deep genetic divergences between phylogeographic clusters of mtDNA seen today.
Keywords:
ancient DNA, glacial refugia, mitochondrial DNA, Pleistocene, population structure
