Mitochondrial DNA Sequencing
A short fragment of mitochondrial cytochrome b was amplified for all individuals in order to provide a maternal signature of inheritance, as is common practice in population genetic studies. Cytochrome bwas selected as it is informative and widely used in mammalian population and phylogenetics. Due to the degraded nature of museum specimens only the first ~300 bp of the cytochromeb gene were selected for amplification in this study. Mitochondrial DNA is present in hundreds to thousands of copies per cell, and historically the recovery of mtDNA has been routinely published in ancient DNA, with nuclear DNA (only one copy per cell) being more difficult to recover. As such, mtDNA sequences serve as a maternal signal as well as a control to ensure endogenous DNA was present in the tested samples.