Radiocarbon dates, nitrogen, and carbon stable isotope data for various Equid bones collected in Alaska, 2015-2019

This data package is associated with the NSF Award # 1417036. Collaborative Research: Land Bridges, Ice-Free Corridors, and Biome Shifts: Impacts on the Evolution and Extinction of Horses in Ice-Age Beringia. This study asks: How important was connectivity among populations of large arctic mammal species for maintaining genetic diversity, influencing evolutionary change, and mitigating extinction risk? What types of barriers affected this connectivity, and how permeable were these barriers to gene flow? This study looks into how caballine horses, that inhabited ice-age Beringia (the biogeographic connector between Asia and North America), were affected by changes involving three different biogeographic barriers/corridors (1. the Bering Strait/Bering Land Bridge, which controlled dispersal and gene flow between Eurasia and Alaska; 2. the Ice-Free Corridor, which controlled gene flow between the Yukon and the Lower 48 States; and 3. biome shifts that periodically disrupted the spatial continuity of the Mammoth-Steppe, the unique ecosystem that stretched from France to the Yukon during the ice ages) during the last 30,000 years of the ice age. The specimens are currently in the Earth Sciences Collection at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Museum and are being curated by Pamela Groves and Daniel H. Mann. Each bone was sub-sampled for ancient DNA extraction, and sub-samples are currently in the collection of Paleogenomics lab UC Santa Cruz, curated by Alisa Vershinina.

本数据包关联美国国家科学基金会（National Science Foundation, NSF）编号1417036的资助项目，其对应的合作研究课题为：《陆桥、无冰走廊与生物群系变迁——冰河期白令地区马类的演化与灭绝效应》。本研究旨在解答两大核心科学问题：其一，北极大型哺乳动物种群间的连通性，对于维持遗传多样性、推动演化进程以及降低灭绝风险而言，其重要性如何？其二，哪些类型的屏障会干扰此类种群连通性，且这些屏障对基因流的通透性如何？本研究聚焦于过去3万年的冰河期内，栖息于冰河期白令地区（连接欧亚大陆与北美大陆的生物地理过渡带）的真马（caballine马），如何受到三类生物地理屏障/走廊变化的影响：1. 白令海峡/白令陆桥，该屏障调控欧亚大陆与阿拉斯加之间的物种扩散与基因流；2. 无冰走廊，调控育空地区与美国本土48州之间的基因流；3. 生物群系变迁，该变化会周期性破坏猛犸草原（Mammoth-Steppe）的空间连续性——该独特生态系统在冰河时期从法国一直延伸至育空地区。本次研究涉及的标本目前馆藏于阿拉斯加费尔班克斯大学博物馆地球科学馆藏部，由Pamela Groves与Daniel H. Mann负责管理。每一块骨骼均被分取子样本用于古DNA提取，子样本目前馆藏于加州大学圣克鲁兹分校古基因组学实验室，由Alisa Vershinina负责管理。