Palaeogenomic analysis of black rat (Rattus rattus) reveals multiple European introductions associated with human economic history
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Jamieson, Alexandra
Hulme-Beaman, Ardern
Conroy, Chris J
Knight, Becky
Speller, Camilla
Al-Jarah, Hiba
Eager, Heidi
Trinks, Alexandra
Adikari, Gamini
Baron, Henriette
Boehlendorf-Arslan, Beate
Bohingamuwa, Wijerathne
Crowther, Alison
Cucchi, Thomas
et al.
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The distribution of the black rat (Rattus rattus) has been heavily influenced by its association with humans. The dispersal history of this non-native commensal rodent across Europe, however, remains poorly understood, and different introductions may have occurred during the Roman and medieval periods. Here, in order to reconstruct the population history of European black rats, we first generate a de novo genome assembly of the black rat. We then sequence 67 ancient and three modern black rat mitogenomes, and 36 ancient and three modern nuclear genomes from archaeological sites spanning the 1st-17th centuries CE in Europe and North Africa. Analyses of our newly reported sequences, together with published mitochondrial DNA sequences, confirm that black rats were introduced into the Mediterranean and Europe from Southwest Asia. Genomic analyses of the ancient rats reveal a population turnover in temperate Europe between the 6th and 10th centuries CE, coincident with an archaeologically attested decline in the black rat population. The near disappearance and re-emergence of black rats in Europe may have been the result of the breakdown of the Roman Empire, the First Plague Pandemic, and/or post-Roman climatic cooling.
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Nature Communications
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13
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© The Author(s) 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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Animal physiological ecology
Biosecurity science and invasive species ecology
Archaeological science
Economic history
Science & Technology
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Science & Technology - Other Topics
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Yu, H; Jamieson, A; Hulme-Beaman, A; Conroy, CJ; Knight, B; Speller, C; Al-Jarah, H; Eager, H; Trinks, A; Adikari, G; Baron, H; Boehlendorf-Arslan, B; Bohingamuwa, W; Crowther, A; Cucchi, T; et al., Palaeogenomic analysis of black rat (Rattus rattus) reveals multiple European introductions associated with human economic history, Nature Communications, 2022, 13, pp. 2399