Marine conservation in Oceania: Past, present, and future

The people of Oceania have long relied on the ocean for sustenance, commerce, and cultural identity, which promulgated a sophisticated understanding of the marine environment and its conservation. Global declines in ocean health now require innovative solutions that can benefit from customary knowledge and practices, which in the past led to sustainable marine resource use. The resurgence of local stewardship, which incorporates customary practices and governance, has shown promise in many locations throughout the Pacific, although a complete return to past practices is not fully implementable owing to the loss of traditional knowledge, centralized governmental structures, economic development, and globalization. Hybrid systems that incorporate elements of customary and contemporary management can overcome some of these limitations to implementation of successful local management, and lead to greater food security, social cohesion, and the creation of an adaptive system that can potentially mitigate the effects of climate change and other stressors.

Walking backwards into the future: the need for a holistic evolutionary approach in Pacific health research

CONTEXT

The Pacific region has had a complex human history. It has been subject to multiple major human dispersal and colonisation events, including some of the earliest Out-of-Africa migrations, the so-called Austronesian expansion of people out of Island Southeast Asia, and the more recent arrival of Europeans. Despite models of island isolation, evidence suggests significant levels of interconnectedness that vary in direction and frequency over time. The Pacific Ocean covers a vast area and its islands provide an array of different physical environments with variable pathogen loads and subsistence opportunities. These diverse environments likely caused Pacific peoples to adapt (both genetically and culturally) in unique ways. Differences in genetic background, in combination with adaptation, likely affect their susceptibility to non-communicable diseases.

OBJECTIVES

Here we provide an overview of some of the key issues in the natural and human history of the Pacific region which are likely to impact human health. We argue that understanding the evolutionary and cultural history of Pacific peoples is essential for the generation of testable hypotheses surrounding potential causes of elevated disease susceptibility among Pacific peoples.

Language continuity despite population replacement in Remote Oceania

Recent genomic analyses show that the earliest peoples reaching Remote Oceania-associated with Austronesian-speaking Lapita culture-were almost completely East Asian, without detectable Papuan ancestry. However, Papuan-related genetic ancestry is found across present-day Pacific populations, indicating that peoples from Near Oceania have played a significant, but largely unknown, ancestral role. Here, new genome-wide data from 19 ancient South Pacific individuals provide direct evidence of a so-far undescribed Papuan expansion into Remote Oceania starting ~2,500 yr BP, far earlier than previously estimated and supporting a model from historical linguistics. New genome-wide data from 27 contemporary ni-Vanuatu demonstrate a subsequent and almost complete replacement of Lapita-Austronesian by Near Oceanian ancestry. Despite this massive demographic change, incoming Papuan languages did not replace Austronesian languages. Population replacement with language continuity is extremely rare-if not unprecedented-in human history. Our analyses show that rather than one large-scale event, the process was incremental and complex, with repeated migrations and sex-biased admixture with peoples from the Bismarck Archipelago.

The Gateway from Near into Remote Oceania: New Insights from Genome-Wide Data

A widely accepted two-wave scenario of human settlement of Oceania involves the first out-of-Africa migration circa 50,000 years ago (ya), and the more recent Austronesian expansion, which reached the Bismarck Archipelago by 3,450 ya. Whereas earlier genetic studies provided evidence for extensive sex-biased admixture between the incoming and the indigenous populations, some archaeological, linguistic, and genetic evidence indicates a more complicated picture of settlement. To study regional variation in Oceania in more detail, we have compiled a genome-wide data set of 823 individuals from 72 populations (including 50 populations from Oceania) and over 620,000 autosomal single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). We show that the initial dispersal of people from the Bismarck Archipelago into Remote Oceania occurred in a "leapfrog" fashion, completely by-passing the main chain of the Solomon Islands, and that the colonization of the Solomon Islands proceeded in a bidirectional manner. Our results also support a divergence between western and eastern Solomons, in agreement with the sharp linguistic divide known as the Tryon-Hackman line. We also report substantial post-Austronesian gene flow across the Solomons. In particular, Santa Cruz (in Remote Oceania) exhibits extraordinarily high levels of Papuan ancestry that cannot be explained by a simple bottleneck/founder event scenario. Finally, we use simulations to show that discrepancies between different methods for dating admixture likely reflect different sensitivities of the methods to multiple admixture events from the same (or similar) sources. Overall, this study points to the importance of fine-scale sampling to understand the complexities of human population history.

Investigating the origins of eastern Polynesians using genome-wide data from the Leeward Society Isles

The debate concerning the origin of the Polynesian speaking peoples has been recently reinvigorated by genetic evidence for secondary migrations to western Polynesia from the New Guinea region during the 2nd millennium BP. Using genome-wide autosomal data from the Leeward Society Islands, the ancient cultural hub of eastern Polynesia, we find that the inhabitants' genomes also demonstrate evidence of this episode of admixture, dating to 1,700-1,200 BP. This supports a late settlement chronology for eastern Polynesia, commencing ~1,000 BP, after the internal differentiation of Polynesian society. More than 70% of the autosomal ancestry of Leeward Society Islanders derives from Island Southeast Asia with the lowland populations of the Philippines as the single largest potential source. These long-distance migrants into Polynesia experienced additional admixture with northern Melanesians prior to the secondary migrations of the 2nd millennium BP. Moreover, the genetic diversity of mtDNA and Y chromosome lineages in the Leeward Society Islands is consistent with linguistic evidence for settlement of eastern Polynesia proceeding from the central northern Polynesian outliers in the Solomon Islands. These results stress the complex demographic history of the Leeward Society Islands and challenge phylogenetic models of cultural evolution predicated on eastern Polynesia being settled from Samoa.

Detailed phylogenetic analysis of primate T-lymphotropic virus type 1 (PTLV-1) sequences from orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) reveals new insights into the evolutionary history of PTLV-1 in Asia

While human T-lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1) originates from ancient cross-species transmission of simian T-lymphotropic virus type 1 (STLV-1) from infected nonhuman primates, much debate exists on whether the first HTLV-1 occurred in Africa, or in Asia during early human evolution and migration. This topic is complicated by a lack of representative Asian STLV-1 to infer PTLV-1 evolutionary histories. In this study we obtained new STLV-1 LTR and tax sequences from a wild-born Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) and performed detailed phylogenetic analyses using both maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference of available Asian PTLV-1 and African STLV-1 sequences. Phylogenies, divergence dates and nucleotide substitution rates were co-inferred and compared using six different molecular clock calibrations in a Bayesian framework, including both archaeological and/or nucleotide substitution rate calibrations. We then combined our molecular results with paleobiogeographical and ecological data to infer the most likely evolutionary history of PTLV-1. Based on the preferred models our analyses robustly inferred an Asian source for PTLV-1 with cross-species transmission of STLV-1 likely from a macaque (Macaca sp.) to an orangutan about 37.9-48.9kya, and to humans between 20.3-25.5kya. An orangutan diversification of STLV-1 commenced approximately 6.4-7.3kya. Our analyses also inferred that HTLV-1 was first introduced into Australia ~3.1-3.7kya, corresponding to both genetic and archaeological changes occurring in Australia at that time. Finally, HTLV-1 appears in Melanesia at ~2.3-2.7kya corresponding to the migration of the Lapita peoples into the region. Our results also provide an important future reference for calibrating information essential for PTLV evolutionary timescale inference. Longer sequence data, or full genomes from a greater representation of Asian primates, including gibbons, leaf monkeys, and Sumatran orangutans are needed to fully elucidate these evolutionary dates and relationships using the model criteria suggested herein.

The invasive land planarian Platydemus manokwari (Platyhelminthes, Geoplanidae): records from six new localities, including the first in the USA

The land planarian Platydemus manokwari de Beauchamp, 1963 or “New Guinea flatworm” is a highly invasive species, mainly in the Pacific area, and recently in Europe (France). We report specimens from six additional countries and territories: New Caledonia (including mainland and two of the Loyalty Islands, Lifou and Maré), Wallis and Futuna Islands, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Puerto Rico, and Florida, USA. We analysed the COI gene (barcoding) in these specimens with two sets of primers and obtained 909 bp long sequences. In addition, specimens collected in Townsville (Australia) were also sequenced. Two haplotypes of the COI sequence, differing by 3.7%, were detected: the “World haplotype” found in France, New Caledonia, French Polynesia, Singapore, Florida and Puerto Rico; and the “Australian haplotype” found in Australia. The only locality with both haplotypes was in the Solomon Islands. The country of origin of Platydemus manokwari is New Guinea, and Australia and the Solomon Islands are the countries closest to New Guinea from which we had specimens. These results suggest that two haplotypes exist in the area of origin of the species, but that only one of the two haplotypes (the “World haplotype”) has, through human agency, been widely dispersed. However, since P. manokwari is now recorded from 22 countries in the world and we have genetic information from only 8 of these, with none from New Guinea, this analysis provides only partial knowledge of the genetic structure of the invasive species. Morphological analysis of specimens from both haplotypes has shown some differences in ratio of the genital structures but did not allow us to interpret the haplotypes as different species. The new reports from Florida and Puerto Rico are firsts for the USA, for the American continent, and the Caribbean. P. manokwari is a known threat for endemic terrestrial molluscs and its presence is a matter of concern. While most of the infected territories reported until now were islands, the newly reported presence of the species in mainland US in Florida should be considered a potential major threat to the whole US and even the Americas.

Diet and human mobility from the lapita to the early historic period on Uripiv island, Northeast Malakula, Vanuatu

Vanuatu was first settled ca. 3000 years ago by populations associated with the Lapita culture. Models of diet, subsistence practices, and human interaction for the Lapita and subsequent occupation periods have been developed mainly using the available archaeological and paleoenvironmental data. We test these models using stable (carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur) and radiogenic (strontium) isotopes to assess the diet and childhood residency of past communities that lived on the small (<1 km2) island of Uripiv, located off the northeast coast of Malakula, Vanuatu. The burials are from the initial Lapita occupation of the island (ca. 2800-2600 BP), the subsequent later Lapita (LL, ca. 2600-2500 BP) and post-Lapita (PL, ca. 2500-2000 BP) occupations, in addition to a late prehistoric/historic (LPH, ca. 300-150 BP) occupation period. The human stable isotope results indicate a progressively more terrestrial diet over time, which supports the archaeological model of an intensification of horticultural and arboricultural systems as local resources were depleted, populations grew, and cultural situations changed. Pig diets were similar and included marine foods during the Lapita and PL periods but were highly terrestrial during the LPH period. This dietary pattern indicates that there was little variation in animal husbandry methods during the first 800 years of prehistory; however, there was a subsequent change as animal diets became more controlled in the LPH period. After comparison with the local bioavailable 87Sr/86Sr baseline, all of the Lapita and LPH individuals appeared to be 'local', but three of the PL individuals were identified as "non-local." We suggest that these "non-locals" moved to the island after infancy or childhood from one of the larger islands, supporting the model of a high level of regional interaction during the post-Lapita period.