Not that I'm aware of. Could you please provide a pointer to support for this?
I think this first emerged in the human genome project. I've since seen the claims that:
1) There is more diversity between any two (even adjacent) chimp populations in Africa than there is between any two human populations at all, and
2) Modern human populations show a "recent" bottleneck in the 100 kya timeframe (not really a lot of generations, given human lifespans).
I realize that some few species (cheetahs come to mind) show the effects of even more recent bottlenecks but understand such to be quite the exception.
I'll see what I can search up on specifics.
I may be extrapolating wildly in claiming we're "one of the least diverse animal species" given that so few have been sequenced. Given the recent bottleneck in our history, however, I'd be surprised if we aren't pretty low on the scale.
|
Over the past several years, since work began on the Human Genome Project, it's become apparent that there is not much genetic diversity between any two human beings on this planet. Indeed, most of the sources I've found on the internet peg the diversity at 10 to 15 percent.
Geneticist figure we went through a population bottleneck sometime in the last 100,000 years. There is strong evidence that ties this bottleneck to the Toba supervolcano eruption about 70,000 years ago. The human population was reduced to a few thousand individuals (about 10,000 to 40,000, though some estimates put the figure as low as 2,000).