The impacts of European arrival on Australian dingoes

Abstract

Though European colonization has dramatically altered the Australian landscape, the impact of these changes on populations such as dingoes remains contentious. By analyzing ancient DNA and stable isotopes from dingoes spanning the last 2,300 y, we showed dingoes shifted their diets after AD 1788, likely due to changes in prey abundance associated with introduced animals and landscape alteration. We also detected admixture between dingoes and introduced European dogs, largely during the 1960s. Our results suggest that this may have provided some benefit to dingoes by mediating the effects of inbreeding. This suggests that maintenance of sufficiently large wild populations of dingoes, in which natural selection can purge deleterious variation, while maintaining beneficial variation, is critical to ensure their long-term viability. Keywords: paleogenomics, admixture, stable dietary isotopes, inbreeding, conservation