Human influence on faunal turnover during Early Holocene in Sicily

Session: Environment, climate and human impact: the archaeological evidence AIQUA CONGRESS 2012 February 15-17 Pisa, Italy 71 HUMAN INFLUENCE ON FAUNAL TURNOVER DURING EARLY HOLOCENE IN SICILY Petruso D., Sineo L. Dipartimento di Biologia Ambientale e Biodiversità, University of Palermo, Via Archirafi, 18, 90123 Palermo, Italy The faunistic analysis at the Late Pleistocene-Holocene transition in Sicily allows to understand the ecologic and/or human role in the faunal turn over of the island. Following the work of Petruso et al. (in press) we assessed that at the Pleniglacial-Late Glacial interval, in supposed absence of human occurrence, were already extinct the last endemites (the middle sized elephant, the endemic sicilian subspecies of red deer, auroch and bison) and the large predators (the spotted hyena and the cave bear) surviving in Sicily from the late Middle Pleistocene. Otherwise some other taxa already arrived during the Interpleniglacial still occur, such as the steppe ass and some small mammals (the common field mouse while the shrew and the Terricola vole arrived slightly before), and others belonging to the long resident taxa (such as the red fox, the wolf, the wild boar and the hedgehog) of the early Middle Pleistocene. The newly arrived fauna accompanied by humans is composed by an heterogeneous group of mammals such as the lynx, the auroch, the roe and red deer, the marten, the weasel, the hare and the wild cat. All these cohort of taxa seem not to be influenced by consistent human presence with the exception of the wild ass and of the linx that become extinct at the transition with Holocene. We conclude that the faunal turn over in Sicily have been driven mostly by climatic fluctuations and geodynamic events (that modulated the connection or isolation phases of Sicily with the mainland) while the ecologic role of humans seems to have been very low until the recent Holocene. During the course of Holocene human have influenced faunal composition with massive hunting but mostly with the active and passive introduction of alien species. Petruso D., Sarà M., Surdi G., Masini F., in press. Le faune a mammiferi della Sicilia tra il Tardoglaciale e L’Olocene. In: La Biogeografia della Sicilia. Biogeographia, 30

The evolutionary history of HSA7/16 synteny in vertebrates: a critical interpretation of comparative cytogenetic and genome sequence data

The current work is an in silico study of data from previous publications and genome browsers, on the origin of the human synteny HSA7a/16p. The molecular composition of the chromosomal segments identified as HSA7a/16 and 7b (free or differently associated) is not yet clear. This means that a syntenic association 7/16, which can be detected by an in situ hybridization (FISH) method in different taxa, may not necessarily correspond to those of the same association in different lineages. In silico research, together with comparative cytogenetics, have been applied in order to define the composition of the 7/16 syntenic association. These results allow a confident reconstruction of the syntenic associations HSA7/16 in diverse vertebrate lineages, indicating various levels of homology, but also considerable levels of non-homology, which should elicit caution with phylogenetic interpretations. The 7/16 association represents a paradigmatic example of the complexity involved in the interpretation of comparative cytogenetic data from a phylogenetic perspective

Archeobiologia: studio di reperti antropologici, zoologici e botanici

L’analisi dei contesti archeologici si avvale sempre più del contributo di scienziati di estrazione biologica per lo studio dei materiali organici rinvenuti nel contesto di scavo e per l’interpretazione di una serie di dati antropologici, faunistici e botanici, utili nella ricostruzione dei paleoambienti. In questa relazione vengono discusse criticamente le evidenze “biologiche” di un sito archeologico medioevale urbano della città di Palermo, che, efficacemente investigate, permettono una sorprendente interpretazione ecologica del sito, che conforta e soprattutto integra le evidenze topografiche, archeologiche e storico-artistiche deducibili con l’analisi archeologica

The Phylogenetic position of Daubentonia madagascariensis (Gmelin, 1788; primates, Strepsirhini) as revealed by chromosomal analysis

One of the major topics in primate evolution is the phylogenetic position of the bizarre Daubentonia madagascariensis (DMA, aye-aye). The principal points that have been discussed for many decades are whether the aye-aye is: (i) the sister group of primates; (ii) the sister group of strepsirhines; or (iii) the sister group of lemurs. Very little is known about Daubentonia evolution, particularly on the chromosomal background. The present report focuses on the chromosomal history of this species. We used available chromosome painting data as the main source to identify conserved chromosomes, chromosomal segments and syntenic associations that have characterized the aye-aye karyotype. The dataset includes 47 characters that have been subjected to a concatenated analysis using maximum parsimony (MP) and Bayesian inference (BI). Both MP and BI topologies show Daubentonia as an independent monophyletic lineage, sister group of all other Strepsirhini. Further, both trees have weak statistical support as result of the high number of autapomorphies and homoplasies that have characterized the history of this group of specie

Evoluzione del cromosoma 4 umano mediante mappaggio di sonde sub cromosomiche in Platyrrhinae, Primates

italian

Reconstructing the Phylogeny of the Human Chromosome 4 Synteny using Comparative Karyology and Genomic Data Analysis

Abstract This work focuses on the evolution of the architecture of human chromosome 4 (HSA4) through the analysis of chromosomal regions that have been conserved over time, and the comparison of regions that have been involved in different rearrangements in placental lineages. As with most elements of the human genome, HSA4 is considered to be evolutionarily stable. A more detailed analysis indicates that the syntenic association has been reshuffled by a series of rearrangements, yielding different chromosomes in various taxa. In its ancestral eutherian state, HSA4 has a syntenic association with HSA8p. We investigated the complex origin of this human chromosome using three different approaches, including: the analysis of chromosome painting features among 157 mammalian species gleaned from published data; the analysis of conserved syntenic orthologous blocks derived from the Ensembl dataset (www.ensembl.org); and the reconstruction of the orthologues of HSA4 in various species, using a maximum parsimony ..