Radiocarbon‐dated fossils indicate woolly mammoths were extirpated from mainland Beringia around 13 000 years ago. However, environmental DNA in permafrost suggests small “cryptic“ populations survived into the Holocene. Resolving this discrepancy is crucial to understanding the drivers of mammoth extinction. The Adopt‐a‐Mammoth project, launched in 2022, is increasing the number of radiocarbon‐dated mammoth fossils to locate...

Integrating in‐situ (wild) and ex‐situ (captive) conservation efforts can mitigate genetic diversity loss and help prevent extinction of endangered wild populations. The whooping crane ( Grus americana ) experienced severe population declines in the 18th century, culminating in a collapse to ~20 individuals by 1944. Legal protections and conservation actions have since increased the census population from a stock of 16 individ...

The black abalone, Haliotis cracherodii , is a large, long‐lived marine mollusc that inhabits rocky intertidal habitats along the coast of California and Mexico. In 1985, populations were impacted by a bacterial disease known as withering syndrome (WS) that wiped out >90% of individuals, leading to the closure of all U.S. black abalone fisheries since 1993. Current conservation strategies include restoring diminished populatio...

Steelhead/rainbow trout ( Oncorhynchus mykiss ) is an imperilled salmonid with two main life history strategies: migrate to the ocean or remain in freshwater. Domesticated hatchery forms of this species have been stocked into almost all California waterways, possibly resulting in introgression into natural populations and altered population structure. We compared whole‐genome sequence data from contemporary populations against...

The extremely rich palaeontological record of the horse family, also known as equids, has provided many examples of macroevolutionary change over the last ~55 Mya. This family is also one of the most documented at the palaeogenomic level, with hundreds of ancient genomes sequenced. While these data have advanced understanding of the domestication history of horses and donkeys, the palaeogenomic record of other equids remains l...

The Bering Land Bridge (BLB) last connected Eurasia and North America during the Late Pleistocene. Although the BLB would have enabled transfers of terrestrial biota in both directions, it also acted as an ecological filter whose permeability varied considerably over time. Here we explore the possible impacts of this ecological corridor on genetic diversity within, and connectivity among, populations of a once wide‐ranging gro...

Aim The Bering Land Bridge ( BLB ) connected Asia and North America during glacial periods, supported a diverse ecosystem of now‐vanished megafauna, and is a proposed glacial refugium. This study tests whether southern coastal Beringia was a refugium for woody taxa during the Last Glacial Maximum ( LGM ) and hypotheses about habitats available on the BLB before and after megafaunal extinction. Location St. Paul Island, Alaska....

It is well established that related species hybridize and that this can have varied but significant effects on speciation and environmental adaptation. It should therefore come as no surprise that hybridization is not limited to species that are alive today. In the last several decades, advances in technologies for recovering and sequencing DNA from fossil remains have enabled the assembly of high‐coverage genome sequences for...

We are writing in response to a recent critique by Emerson & Hickerson ( ), who challenge the evidence of a time‐dependent bias in molecular rate estimates. This bias takes the form of a negative relationship between inferred evolutionary rates and the ages of the calibrations on which these estimates are based. Here, we present a summary of the evidence obtained from a broad range of taxa that supports a time‐dependent bias i...

Arctic animals face dramatic habitat alteration due to ongoing climate change. Understanding how such species have responded to past glacial cycles can help us forecast their response to today's changing climate. Gray whales are among those marine species likely to be strongly affected by Arctic climate change, but a thorough analysis of past climate impacts on this species has been complicated by lack of information about an...

Polar bears are an arctic, marine adapted species that is closely related to brown bears. Genome analyses have shown that polar bears are distinct and genetically homogeneous in comparison to brown bears. However, these analyses have also revealed a remarkable episode of polar bear gene flow into the population of brown bears that colonized the Admiralty, Baranof and Chichagof islands ( ABC islands) of Alaska. Here, we present...

After centuries of human hunting, the E urasian beaver C astor fiber had disappeared from most of its original range by the end of the 19th century. The surviving relict populations are characterized by both low genetic diversity and strong phylogeographical structure. However, it remains unclear whether these attributes are the result of a human‐induced, late Holocene bottleneck or already existed prior to this reduction in r...

Phylogenetic analyses of ancient DNA data can provide a timeline for evolutionary change even in the absence of fossils. The power to infer the evolutionary rate is, however, highly dependent on the number and age of samples, the information content of the sequence data and the demographic history of the sampled population. In this issue of M olecular Ecology , Sheng et al . ( ) analysed mitochondrial DNA sequences isolated fr...

Collared lemmings (genus D icrostonyx ) are circumpolar A rctic arvicoline rodents associated with tundra. However, during the last glacial maximum ( LGM ), D icrostonyx lived along the southern ice margin of the L aurentide ice sheet in communities comprising both temperate and boreal species. To better understand these communities and the fate of these southern individuals, we compare mitochondrial cytochrome b sequence data...

The long‐term persistence of forest‐dwelling caribou ( Rangifer tarandus caribou ) will probably be determined by management and conservation decisions. Understanding the evolutionary relationships between modern caribou herds, and how these relationships have changed through time will provide key information for the design of appropriate management strategies. To explore these relationships, we amplified microsatellite and mi...

Lions were the most widespread carnivores in the late Pleistocene, ranging from southern Africa to the southern USA, but little is known about the evolutionary relationships among these Pleistocene populations or the dynamics that led to their extinction. Using ancient DNA techniques, we obtained mitochondrial sequences from 52 individuals sampled across the present and former range of lions. Phylogenetic analysis revealed thr...