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. 2014 Apr 1;111(13):4826-31.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1320412111. Epub 2014 Mar 17.

Using ancient DNA to study the origins and dispersal of ancestral Polynesian chickens across the Pacific

Vicki A Thomson  1 , Ophélie Lebrasseur, Jeremy J Austin, Terry L Hunt, David A Burney, Tim Denham, Nicolas J Rawlence, Jamie R Wood, Jaime Gongora, Linus Girdland Flink, Anna Linderholm, Keith Dobney, Greger Larson, Alan Cooper
Affiliations

Using ancient DNA to study the origins and dispersal of ancestral Polynesian chickens across the Pacific

Vicki A Thomson et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

The human colonization of Remote Oceania remains one of the great feats of exploration in history, proceeding east from Asia across the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Human commensal and domesticated species were widely transported as part of this diaspora, possibly as far as South America. We sequenced mitochondrial control region DNA from 122 modern and 22 ancient chicken specimens from Polynesia and Island Southeast Asia and used these together with Bayesian modeling methods to examine the human dispersal of chickens across this area. We show that specific techniques are essential to remove contaminating modern DNA from experiments, which appear to have impacted previous studies of Pacific chickens. In contrast to previous reports, we find that all ancient specimens and a high proportion of the modern chickens possess a group of unique, closely related haplotypes found only in the Pacific. This group of haplotypes appears to represent the authentic founding mitochondrial DNA chicken lineages transported across the Pacific, and allows the early dispersal of chickens across Micronesia and Polynesia to be modeled. Importantly, chickens carrying this genetic signature persist on several Pacific islands at high frequencies, suggesting that the original Polynesian chicken lineages may still survive. No early South American chicken samples have been detected with the diagnostic Polynesian mtDNA haplotypes, arguing against reports that chickens provide evidence of Polynesian contact with pre-European South America. Two modern specimens from the Philippines carry haplotypes similar to the ancient Pacific samples, providing clues about a potential homeland for the Polynesian chicken.

Keywords: Lapita; Pacific colonization; archaeology; migration; phylogeography.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Map showing samples and localities mentioned in this study. Samples from Vanuatu and Guam previously published in Dancause et al. (26) are underlined, with haplogroup frequencies of the chicken specimens indicated by pie charts (thick outlines indicate ancient samples). Colors refer to haplotype/haplogroup: D haplogroup in red, E haplogroup in blue, and all other haplotypes are in black. Gray arrows represent movements inferred from archaeological data (49), whereas black arrows represent routes tested in BayeSSC analysis (dashed arrows indicate movements tested in different scenarios, whereas solid arrows are constant across the different scenarios). 1, introduction of chickens within Near Oceania; 2, alternate hypothesis proposed by (38); 3, introduction of chickens from New Guinea into Micronesia; 4–7, spread of chickens from Western Polynesia into, and within, Eastern Polynesia. Dashed line indicates demarcation between Near and Remote Oceania, Western Polynesia is defined by a dashed circle, and Eastern Polynesia is indicated by a gray shaded triangle.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Phylogenetic tree based on WMG data from Miao et al. (25). Bayesian posterior probability and maximum likelihood bootstrap (in parentheses) support values are shown on branches. All haplogroups with more than one individual have robust support and concur with the designations of Liu et al. (24).
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
Unrooted haplogroup D network generated using 201 bp of mitochondrial CR analyzed in this study, including 144 sequences generated in this study and 1,226 sequences from GenBank (, –, , , –46). Labels on nodes are unique haplotype numbers from this study (SI Appendix, Dataset S6). Colors reflect sampling location, with outline around pie charts representing ancient samples (black), modern Pacific (white), and modern ISEA (gray).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

References

    1. Denham T, et al. Dating the appearance of Lapita pottery in the Bismarck Archipelago and its dispersal to Remote Oceania. Archaeology in Oceania. 2012;47(1):39–46.
    1. Green RC. The Lapita Cultural Complex: Current evidence and proposed models. Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association Bulletin. 1991;11(1991):295–305.
    1. Kirch P. The Lapita Peoples: Ancestors of the Oceanic World. Oxford: Blackwell; 1997.
    1. Spriggs M. The Island Melanesians. Oxford: Blackwell; 1997.
    1. Summerhayes G. Lapita Interaction. Canberra, Australia: Australian National Univ Press; 2000.

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