Ancient mitogenomes reveal evidence for the Late Miocene dispersal of mergansers to the Southern Hemisphere

Abstract

Mergansers are riverine and coastal piscivorous ducks that are widespread throughout North America and Eurasia but uncommon in the Southern Hemisphere. One species occurs in South America and at least two extinct species are known from New Zealand. It has been proposed that these Southern Hemisphere merganser lineages were founded by at least two independent dispersal events from the Northern Hemisphere. However, some morphological and behavioural evidence suggests that Southern Hemisphere mergansers may form a monophyletic clade that descended from only a single dispersal event from the Northern Hemisphere. For example, Southern Hemisphere mergansers share several characteristics that differ from Northern Hemisphere mergansers (e.g. non-migratory vs. migratory, sexual monochromatism vs. sexual dichromatism, long vs. short pair bonds). We sequenced complete mitogenomes from the Brazilian merganser and an extinct merganser from New Zealand—the Auckland Island merganser. Our results show that the Brazilian and Auckland Island mergansers are not sister-taxa, and probably descend from two separate colonization events from the Northern Hemisphere at least 7 Mya. Nuclear (palaeo)genomic data may help to further resolve the relationship between living and extinct mergansers, including merganser fossils from New Zealand that have not been subjected to palaeogenetic analysis.