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Coat colour adaptation of post-glacial horses to increasing forest vegetation

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 1, pages 1816–1819 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

Wild horses unexpectedly survived terminal Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions until eventual European extirpation in the twentieth century. This survival is tied to either their occurrence in cryptic open habitats or their adaptation to forests. Our niche modelling inferred an increasing presence of horses in post-glacial forests, and our analysis of ancient DNA suggested significant selection for black phenotypes as indicating adaptation to forests.

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Fig. 1: Adaptation of wild horses to forests.
Fig. 2: Violin plots of selection coefficients.

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Acknowledgements

We thank C. Yurrita and L. Dalén for feedback on early versions of the manuscript. This project was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (LU852/7-4).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centro de Ciencias de la Complejidad, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad de México, 04510, Mexico

    Edson Sandoval-Castellanos & Constantino Gonzalez-Salazar

  2. Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, 10315, Berlin, Germany

    Saskia Wutke & Arne Ludwig

  3. Departamento de Ciencias Ambientales, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Unidad Lerma, Estado de México, 52005, Mexico

    Constantino Gonzalez-Salazar

Authors
  1. Edson Sandoval-Castellanos
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  2. Saskia Wutke
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  3. Constantino Gonzalez-Salazar
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  4. Arne Ludwig
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Contributions

A.L. planned the project. A.L. and E.S.-C. designed the study. S.W. provided and processed the ancient genotypes. S.W. and E.S.-C. analysed the ancient DNA data set. C.G.-S. carried out the niche modelling analysis. E.S.-C. and A.L. wrote the manuscript. All authors gave final approval for the publication.

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Correspondence to Arne Ludwig.

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Sandoval-Castellanos, E., Wutke, S., Gonzalez-Salazar, C. et al. Coat colour adaptation of post-glacial horses to increasing forest vegetation. Nat Ecol Evol 1, 1816–1819 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-017-0358-5

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