Pumas have remarkable dispersal capabilities ( Maehr et al. all white puma sneakers , 2002 ; Beier et al. , 2003 ) and successfully occupy a diverse array of habitats, illustrating their potential to adapt to the breadth of environmental conditions occurring across the continent, from tropical forests and marshes to dry scrubland and cold Andean or Patagonian biomes ( Redford and Eisenberg, 1992 ; Nowak, 1999 ). Pumas are solitary and territorial, with large home ranges.

Females tend to occupy smaller areas and disperse shorter distances, thus being more philopatric than males ( Logan and Sweanor, 2001 ; Maehr et al. , 2002 ). 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 populations.Fossil evidence indicates that pumas were already present in North America 0.4 best puma shoes 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 much longer history as a black and gold puma shoes distinct evolutionary lineage.

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 ).To investigate the evolutionary relationships among puma mtDNA lineages, haplotype networks were built using the median-joining approach ( Bandelt et al. , 1999 ), as implemented in the software Network 4.5.1.6. We explored two outgroup options for rooting the network, one with the P. yagouaroundi sequences generated here, and the other employing M.

Additionally, to investigate spatial patterns of genetic structure in pumas we assessed the correlation between genetic and geographic distances for all pairs of sampled individuals black puma sandals using a Mantel test ( Mantel, 1967 ). This was performed with the program Alleles in Space (AIS) ( Miller, 2005 ), employing the proportion of differences ( i.e. a p-distance equivalent) to generate the genetic distance matrix and 10,000 permutations to assess statistical significance. We also employed AIS to perform a spatial autocorrelation analysis of the data set, using 11 distance classes, equalized sample sizes across classes, and 10,000 permutations to assess significance.

We applied a uniform prior using these ages as conservative minimum and maximum boundaries, respectively. The final run was based on 10 8 MCMC generations, with samples taken every 10 4 steps, and the first 10 4 steps removed as burn-in.The second set of Beast analyses aimed to infer the time of the most recent common ancestor ( t MRCA ) of different groups of samples, as well as to reconstruct the demographic history of pumas by estimating past fluctuations in population size via the Bayesian Skyline Plot (BSP) approach ( Drummond et al. , 2005 ). We assumed a Bayesian skyline tree prior and a strict molecular clock, burgundy puma shoes whose evolutionary rate was based on the estimate derived from the first round of analyses.

We assessed the t MRCA for four different sample sets: (i) complete sample; (ii) South America only; (iii) North and Central Americas (NA NCA); and (iv) a subset of 24 NA NCA samples that formed a regionally endemic subclade in the haplotype network, suggestive of autochthonous diversification (see Results). The BSP analyses were performed only for sets (i) and (ii), as their larger sample size allowed for more robust demographic inferences. The MCMC parameters were the same as in the first set of Beast analyses.