Native or not? Ancient DNA rejects persistence of New Zealand's endemic black swan: A reply to Montano et al.

Abstract

Montano et al.'s (Evolutionary Applications, 2017) recent coalescent analysis of modern black swan (Cygnus atratus) genotypes concluded that New Zealand's native black swan survived prehistoric hunting, to later hybridize with introduced black swans from Australia. However, this persistence scenario conflicts with new ancient DNA, morphometric and archaeological analyses of prehistoric New Zealand swan (C. sumnerensis) remains, which instead support a wholesale extinction-replacement scenario. Multiple lines of evidence indicate that C. sumnerensis did not survive beyond the earliest phase of Polynesian settlement in New Zealand and thus question the reliability of coalescent inferences derived from small numbers of microsatellite loci.