Genomic inference of a human super bottleneck in Mid-Pleistocene transition

Abstract

AbstractThe demographic history is a foundation of human evolutionary studies. We developed the fast infinitesimal time coalescent (FitCoal) process, which allows the accurate calculation of the composite likelihood of a site frequency spectrum and provides the precise inference of demographic history. Genomic analysis showed that African populations have passed through a population super bottleneck, a small effective size of approximately 1,280 breeding individuals between 930 and 813 thousand years ago. This time interval coincides with a gap in the human fossil record in Africa and possibly marks the origin of the Homo heidelbergensis. Further modelling analysis confirmed the existence of the super bottleneck in non-African populations. Our results provide new insights into human evolution during the Mid-Pleistocene.One-Sentence SummaryA new method for demographic history inference and a human super bottleneck possibly marking the origin of H. heidelbergensis