The Journal of Heredity 2001:92(6)
© 2001 The American Genetic Association 92:475-480
Modern African Ape Populations as Genetic and Demographic Models of the Last Common Ancestor of Humans, Chimpanzees, and Gorillas
From the Department of Anthropology, Yale University, P.O. Box 208277, New Haven, CT 06520-8277 (Jensen-Seaman and Deinard) and Department of Genetics, Room I-353 SHM, Yale University School of Medicine, 333 Cedar St., New Haven, CT 06520-8005 (Jensen-Seaman, Deinard, and Kidd). Michael I. Jensen-Seaman is currently at the Human and Molecular Genetics Center, Medical College of Wisconsin, 8701 Watertown Plank Rd., Milwaukee, WI 53226. Amos S. Deinard is currently at the School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California-Davis, Davis, CA 95616.
Address correspondence to Kenneth K. Kidd at the address above or e-mail: kidd{at}biomed.med.yale.edu.
In order to fully understand human evolutionary history through the use of molecular data, it is essential to include our closest relatives as a comparison. We provide here estimates of nucleotide diversity and effective population size of modern African ape species using data from several independent noncoding nuclear loci, and use these estimates to make predictions about the nature of the ancestral population that eventually gave rise to the living species of African apes, including humans. Chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas possess two to three times more nucleotide diversity than modern humans. We hypothesize that the last common ancestor (LCA) of these species had an effective population size more similar to modern apes than modern humans. In addition, estimated dates for the divergence of the Homo, Pan, and Gorilla lineages suggest that the LCA may have had stronger geographic structuring to its mtDNA than its nuclear DNA, perhaps indicative of strong female philopatry or a dispersal system analogous to gorillas, where females disperse only short distances from their natal group. Synthesizing different classes of data, and the inferences drawn from them, allows us to predict some of the genetic and demographic properties of the LCA of humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas.
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