Snow sheep explained

The snow sheep (Ovis nivicola), or Siberian bighorn sheep, is a species of sheep from the mountainous areas in the northeast of Siberia. One subspecies, the Putorana snow sheep (Ovis nivicola borealis), lives isolated from the other forms in the Putoran Mountains.

Subspecies

• Kolyma snow sheep, O. n. ssp
• Koryak snow sheep, O. n. koriakorum
• Okhotsk snow sheep, O. n. alleni
• Yakutian snow sheep, O. n. lydekkeri
• Kamchatkan snow sheep, O. n. nivicola
• Putorana snow sheep, O. n. borealis
• Chukotka snow sheep, O. n. tschuktschorum

Taxonomy and genetics

Ovis nivicola appeared about 600,000 years ago. A number of these wild sheep crossed the Bering Land Bridge (Beringia), from Siberia into Alaska, during the Pleistocene epoch (about 750,000 years ago); new and extant lineages were created from this migration, notably the North American Dall sheep (or thin-horn sheep) and the bighorn sheep, the two which O. nivicola is most closely related to.

Currently the mitochondrial genome of Ovis nivicola has been completely mapped out.^[1]

A first-draft genome assembly exists for Ovis nivicola.^[2]

External links

• Ovis nivicola, Snow Sheep, on ultimateungulate.com

Notes and References

1. Dotsev, A. V. et al. "The First Complete Mitochondrial Genomes Of Snow Sheep (Ovis Nivicola) And Thinhorn Sheep (Ovis Dalli) And Their Phylogenetic Implications For The Genus Ovis". Mitochondrial DNA Part B, vol 4, no. 1, 2019, pp. 1332-1333. Informa UK Limited,
2. Maulik Upadhyay, Andreas Hauser, Elisabeth Kunz, Stefan Krebs, Helmut Blum, Arsen Dotsev, Innokentiy Okhlopkov, Vugar Bagirov, Gottfried Brem, Natalia Zinovieva, Ivica Medugorac, The First Draft Genome Assembly of Snow Sheep (Ovis nivicola), Genome Biology and Evolution, Volume 12, Issue 8, August 2020, Pages 1330–1336, https://doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaa124