Historical DNA from an unidentified 19th century paratype reveals genetic continuity of a Bahamian hutia (Geocapromys ingrahami) population across the past 500 years

Present day species geographic ranges show the proverbial fingerprints of past human activities, including distributions truncated by extirpations or extended through translocations. Natural history museum collections and genomic techniques for degraded samples can uncover the complex evolutionary consequences of such processes and generate baselines for interpreting magnitudes of extinction (e.g., Card et al. 2022; Jensen et al. 2022; Lopez et al. 2020). Here we use genomic data and historical letters, publications, and notes from a recently discovered Bahamian hutia (Geocapromys ingrahami; (FMP Z02816) specimen the Fairbanks Museum in Vermont to unravel when and where the specimen was collected and to place it in a phylogenetic context with samples that that predate and postdate human arrival in The Bahamas. We determined that this specimen was collected with the holotype specimen in 1891 on East Plana Cay by David P. Ingraham. Mitochondrial genome data indicates this specimen is part of the southern Bahamian population that was found on multiple islands prior to European colonization of the islands and is now largely restricted to East Plana Cay.