Bayesian Coalescent Inference from Mitochondrial DNA Variation of the Colonization Time of Arabia by the Hamadryas Baboon (Papio hamadryas hamadryas)

Abstract

Even after its separation from Africa, around the Miocene–Pliocene transition, the ineludible importance of Arabia in the history of biotic movements between Africa and Eurasia has been verified by accumulating data from biogeographic (Delany, 1989), paleontological (Thomas et al., 1998), genetic (Kivisild et al., 2004; Abu-Amero et al., 2008), and archaeological studies (Petraglia and Alsharekh, 2003; Beyin, 2006; Rose, 2007; Petraglia et al., 2009). What we don’t know for most of the (inferred) species dispersals between the two continents since the Miocene, are the details about routes, timings, and the role of the Arabian peninsula in these events. The difficult challenge now is to uncover those details for each species dispersal between Africa and Eurasia. For instance, for any given species, was Arabia a swift shortcut, a prolonged stopover, a dead end, the remaining refuge of a receding expansion into Eurasia, or a mere bystander of a migration exclusively via the northern Levantine corridor?.