To further investigate the phylogeographic structure and demographic new balance 501 womens history of pumas we analyzed mtDNA sequences from 186 individuals sampled throughout their range, with emphasis on South America. Our objectives were to refine the phylogeographic assessment within South America and to investigate the demographic history of pumas using a coalescent approach. Our results extend previous phylogeographic findings, reassessing the delimitation of historical population units in South America and demonstrating that this species experienced a considerable demographic expansion in the Holocene, ca. 8,000 years new balance 574 red ago.

Overall, the species' ecological flexibility and dispersal capabilities have the potential to induce broad genetic connectivity across large geographic areas, unless historical barriers have limited gene flow among new balance 993 mens populations.

Fossil evidence indicates that pumas were already present in North America 0.4 million years ago (MYA) ( Kurtén and Anderson, 1980 ). In parallel, molecular data ( Johnson et al. , 2006 ) have led to an estimate of its divergence from the sister-species P. yagouaroundi of 4.17 MYA (C.I.: 3.16 6.01MYA), suggesting a new balance 1080 mens much longer history as a distinct evolutionary lineage.

In a thorough study of puma phylogeography, Culver et al. (2000) assessed the current and historical genetic diversity present in this species, based on a large sampling of individuals from across its range. That study indicated that most of the 32 classical puma subspecies did not correspond to definable genetic units and reduced the number of recognized new balance cruz v2 subspecies to six.

Within the mtDNA, the NADH dehydrogenase subunit 5 ( ND5 ) gene has been successfully used in phylogenetic and phylogeographic studies of felids and other carnivores ( e.g. Culver et al. , 2000 ; Trinca et al. , 2012 ).

Sequence electropherograms were visually inspected and edited using Chromas Lite 2.01 or FinchTV 1.4.0. Sequences were aligned with the CLUSTALW algorithm ( Higgings et al. , 1996 ) implemented in MEGA 4 ( Tamura et al. , 2007 ), followed by manual verification and editing. The resulting novel puma sequences were deposited in GenBank (accession numbers {"type":"entrez-nucleotide-range","attrs":{"text":"KF460496-KF460523","start_term":"KF460496","end_term":"KF460523","start_term_id":"572098819","end_term_id":"572098873"}} KF460496-KF460523 ).