Phylogenetic position of the presumably extinct slender-billed curlew, Numenius tenuirostris

Abstract

The high-capacity DNA analysis of museum samples opens new opportunities, associated with the investigation of extinct species evolution. Here, the complete mitochondrial genome of the presumably extinct bird species, the slender-billed curlew Numenius tenuirostris (Charadriiformes: Scolopacidae) is presented. Our results showed that mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is 16,705 base pairs (bp) in length and contain 13 protein-coding genes, two rRNA genes, and 22 tRNA genes. The overall base composition of the genome is 30.8% – A, 29.8% – C, 25.4% – T, 14.0% – G, and without a significant GC bias of 43.7%. Phylogenetic analyses based on the cytochrome B (cytB) gene and the whole mtDNA sequences revealed that N. tenuirostris had a close genetic relationship to Eurasian curlew (N. arquata), Far Eastern curlew (N. madagascariensis), and long-billed curlew – N. americanus. Besides, it reveals that Numenius genus is genetically distant from other Scolopacidae taxons. Together, these results provide a clear genetic perspective into the speciation process among the curlew genus members and points to a clear taxonomic position of N. tenuirostris.

Keywords:

• Extinction
• historical DNA
• Scolopacidae
• mitochondrial genome
• museum specimen

Acknowledgments

The authors want to thank Prof. Jorge Galindo-Villegas for his valuable comments. The authors are also grateful to Mikhail V. Kovalchuk (National Research Centre “Kurchatov Institute”, Moscow, Russia) for his ongoing support.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.

Data availability

Mitochondrial genome assembly is publicly available at the NCBI BioProject: PRJNA495009 (NCBI accession number: MK108195).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Centre “Kurchatov Institute”. This work has been carried out using computing resources of the federal common usage center Complex for Simulation and Data Processing for Mega-science Facilities at National Research Centre “Kurchatov Institute” (ministry subvention under agreement RFMEFI62117X0016), http://ckp.nrcki.ru/. PST’s activity related to this paper was supported by the Research project of MSU Zoological Museum (AAAA-A16-116021660077-3).