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. 2023 Aug 15;14(1):4641.
doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-40198-w.

The genomic history of the indigenous people of the Canary Islands

Javier G Serrano  1 , Alejandra C Ordóñez  2 , Jonathan Santana  2 , Elías Sánchez-Cañadillas  2 , Matilde Arnay  3 , Amelia Rodríguez-Rodríguez  2 , Jacob Morales  2 , Javier Velasco-Vázquez  4 , Verónica Alberto-Barroso  5 , Teresa Delgado-Darias  6 , M Carmen Cruz de Mercadal  6 , Juan Carlos Hernández  7 , Marco A Moreno-Benítez  5 , Jorge Pais  8 , Harald Ringbauer  9 , Martin Sikora  10 , Hugh McColl  10 , Maria Pino-Yanes  11   12 , Mariano Hernández Ferrer  13 , Carlos D Bustamante  14 , Rosa Fregel  15   16
Affiliations

The genomic history of the indigenous people of the Canary Islands

Javier G Serrano et al. Nat Commun. .

Abstract

The indigenous population of the Canary Islands, which colonized the archipelago around the 3rd century CE, provides both a window into the past of North Africa and a unique model to explore the effects of insularity. We generate genome-wide data from 40 individuals from the seven islands, dated between the 3rd-16rd centuries CE. Along with components already present in Moroccan Neolithic populations, the Canarian natives show signatures related to Bronze Age expansions in Eurasia and trans-Saharan migrations. The lack of gene flow between islands and constant or decreasing effective population sizes suggest that populations were isolated. While some island populations maintained relatively high genetic diversity, with the only detected bottleneck coinciding with the colonization time, other islands with fewer natural resources show the effects of insularity and isolation. Finally, consistent genetic differentiation between eastern and western islands points to a more complex colonization process than previously thought.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1. Geographical and temporal adscription of the Canary Islands indigenous individuals.
a Available ancient whole-genome data from western North Africa obtained from the literature: Taforalt, Kehf al Baroud and Ifri n’Amr ou Moussa; decontextualized individuals from Tenerife and Gran Canaria, and individuals from Cendro site in Gran Canaria. b Geographical adscription of the archaeological sites considered in this study. Individuals from the Canary Islands with no archaeological site adscription are not included in b: five previously published individuals from Gran Canaria and Tenerife and an individual from Fuerteventura generated in this study. c Available radiocarbon data for the Canary Islands indigenous genomes. The dotted line in c indicates the start of the Castilian conquest (1402). The darker grey tile indicates the period in which the indigenous people of the Canary Islands were in contact with European seafarers. Previously published genomes are indicated in grey while genomes generated in this study are indicated in other colors. Maps made with Natural Earth (https://naturalearthdata.com).
Fig. 2
Fig. 2. Genetic composition of the Canary Islands indigenous people and their relationship to other ancient and modern populations.
a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of the indigenous population of the Canary Islands in relation to other ancient and modern individuals from Europe, the Middle East and Africa, where the differentiation between western (green/blue) and eastern islands (red/violet) can be observed. b Unsupervised clustering analysis of the ancient and current populations from North Africa and the Canary Islands, both using the Human Origins panel, and based on ADMIXTURE results for K = 8. PD: present-day. c Ancestry proportions obtained for the qpAdm modeling of the CIP for the best-fitting model (Morocco_EN, Morocco_LN, Germany_BellBeaker and Mota), considering the entire archipelago, western and eastern islands and insular populations.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3. Observed heterozygosity and runs of homozygosity for the Canary Islands indigenous people.
a Heterozygosity estimations obtained for all the islands (all individuals considered: El Hierro n = 4, La Palma n = 3, La Gomera n = 4, Tenerife n = 11, Gran Canaria n = 23, Fuerteventura n = 2, Lanzarote n = 2). The dotted lines represent the pi estimation obtained from Morocco_EN (pi = 0.157) and Morocco_LN (pi = 0.213). b Individual ROH results for the indigenous people of the Canary Islands.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4. Founder events, effective population size (Ne) trends and IBD clustering observed for the Canary Islands population.
In a Ne trends are shown for the entire archipelago, smallest islands/islands with the least natural resources (La Gomera, El Hierro, Fuerteventura and Lanzarote); Gran Canaria, and Tenerife. *Excluding La Palma. The trend line represents the estimated mean of Ne, while its 95% empirical confidence intervals are shown in dark grey. The 95% empirical confidence intervals for individual Ne are shown in light grey. b Clustering of the individuals based on the inferred IBD segments in which each node represents an individual (labeled as individual_archaeological site_island_average RCD) colored based in the island they belong. Circles represent the proportion of shared IBD segments. c Founder event time range (left) and intensity (right) for the entire archipelago, western and eastern islands; and islands with N ≥ 4 and coverage ≥0.1X are shown (Archipelago n = 47, Eastern Islands n = 27, Western Islands n = 20, El Hierro n = 4, Tenerife n = 9, Gran Canaria n = 23). Data are presented as mean values and 95% confidence intervals. For the founder effect time plot, the grey tile represents the time range of the putative archipelago’s founder event, while the blue tile represents the Vandal Minimum period range, and the yellow tile represents the Medieval Warm Period. In the intensity founder effect plot, the grey tile represents the intensity range of most of the founder events occurred in continental populations, while the dotted line represents the intensity of the founder effect in Ashkenazi Jews (1.7%).
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