title: Vanishing native American dog lineages.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Dogs were an important element in many native American cultures at the time Europeans arrived. Although previous ancient DNA studies revealed the existence of unique native American mitochondrial sequences, these have not been found in modern dogs, mainly purebred, studied so far.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We identified many previously undescribed mitochondrial control region sequences in 400 dogs from rural and isolated areas as well as street dogs from across the Americas. However, sequences of native American origin proved to be exceedingly rare, and we estimate that the native population contributed only a minor fraction of the gene pool that constitutes the modern population.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The high number of previously unidentified haplotypes in our sample suggests that a lot of unsampled genetic variation exists in non-breed dogs. Our results also suggest that the arrival of European colonists to the Americas may have led to an extensive replacement of the native American dog population by the dogs of the invaders.
authors.affiliation: Department of Evolutionary Biology, Uppsala University, 75236 Uppsala, Sweden.
authors.forename: Santiago
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Castroviejo-Fisher
authors.forename: Pontus
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Skoglund
authors.forename: Raúl
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Valadez
authors.forename: Carles
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Vilà
authors.forename: Jennifer A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Leonard
mesh_terms: D000569:Americas; D000818:Animals; D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial / Q000235:genetics; D004285:Dogs / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics*; D056727:Endangered Species; D014644:Genetic Variation; D005828:Genetics, Population; D006239:Haplotypes; D010802:Phylogeny; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA
chemical_list: D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial