The Evolutionary Dynamics of the Lion Panthera leo Revealed by Host and Viral Population Genomics

Antunes, Agostinho; Troyer, Jennifer L.; Roelke, Melody E.; Pecon-Slattery, Jill; Packer, Craig; Winterbach, Christiaan; Winterbach, Hanlie; Hemson, Graham; Frank, Laurence; Stander, Philip; Siefert, Ludwig; Driciru, Margaret; Funston, Paul J.; Alexander, Kathy A.; Prager, Katherine C.; Mills, Gus; Wildt, David; Bush, Mitch; O'Brien, Stephen J.; Johnson, Warren E.

Although we did not explicitly try to address the adequacy of lion subspecies designations (currently only one African subspecies is widely recognized) [38, 39] , we provided strong evidence that there is no evidence of substantial genetic exchange of matrilines among existing populations as the AMOVA [40] withinpopulation component was uniformly high in all distinct subdivision scenarios (W ST <0.920; P,0.0001; three-six groups; Table S6 ). Similarly, significant population structure was detected from nDNA (F ST = 0.18), with low levels of admixture evident from Bayesian analysis [22] (a = 0.033). Therefore, employing a bottom-up perspective that prioritizes populations, rather than large-scale units (e.g. all African lions), might preserve and maintain lion diversity and evolutionary processes most efficiently [41] .