Cinthia Carolina Abbona

• Molecular Biology
• PhD in Biological Sciences at National Scientific and Technical Research Council, San Rafael, Mendoza, Argentina

The Lesser Rhea (Rhea pennata), a large flightless bird native to South America, held historical significance as a vital resource for Patagonian hunter-gatherer societies. Despite the species’ cultural and ecological importance, the historical population dynamics of R. pennata remain poorly understood. Although present in the archaeological record,...

The southern Mendoza province, located in the northern region of Patagonia, was inhabited by hunter-gatherer groups until historic times. Previous archaeological studies have reported canid remains among faunal assemblages, which were assumed to be part of the human diet. However, the taxonomic identification and significance of these canids within...

Hunting by humans impacted the guanaco population in northwestern Patagonia during the late Holocene. A recent ancient DNA study has demonstrated a decrease in guanaco population size during the last 2000 years BP, which appears to be the result of resource depression. In this paper, we examine the genetic structure of the guanaco population during...

Somatic hybrids between distant species offer a remarkable model to study genomic recombination events after mitochondrial fusion. Recently, our lab described highly chimeric mitogenomes in two somatic hybrids between the Solanaceae Nicotiana tabacum and Hyoscyamus niger resulting from interparental homologous recombination. To better examine the r...

Somatic hybrids between distant species offer a remarkable model to study genomic recombination events after mitochondrial fusion. Recently, our lab described highly chimeric mitogenomes in two somatic hybrids between the Solanaceae Nicotiana tabacum and Hyoscyamus niger resulting from interparental homologous recombination. To better examine the r...

This paper explores the relationships between population change and human diet after the adoption of domesticated resources in northwest Mendoza, a subregion of central western Argentina (CWA). To estimate population, we used summed probability distributions of radiocarbon ages (RC-SPD). We used carbon and nitrogen stable isotope values (ẟ¹³Cco, ẟ¹...

The south of Mendoza province has been characterized as the southern frontier of South American pre-Hispanic agriculture on the eastern slope of the Andes. This characterization has been based on the presence of crops at the archaeological sites and adopting a dichotomic perception of hunter-gatherers and farmers. During the last few decades, the a...

In this paper we evaluate the role of human strategies in the Andean Piedmont from northern Patagonia across the Holocene. Specifically, we present the analysis of the Early Holocene-Late Holocene archaeological record of Salamanca cave (Mendoza-Argentina). We identified technological changes that occurred during the Late Holocene and the implicati...

Zooarchaeologists have relied upon various approaches to study the impacts of harvest pressure and environmental change on ungulate populations, such as analysis of prey mortality patterns and morphometrics. Analysis of ancient DNA from ungulate bones and bone fragments from archaeological sites provides an additional means for studying prey popula...

The southern boundary of prehispanic farming in South America occurs in central Mendoza Province, Argentina at approximately 34 degrees south latitude. Archaeological evidence of farming includes the recovery of macrobotanical remains of cultigens and isotopic chemistry of human bone. Since the 1990s, archaeologists have also hypothesized that the...

In this paper we explore how changes in human strategies are differentially modulated by climate in a border area between hunter-gatherers and farmers. We analyze multiple proxies: radiocarbon summed probability distributions (SPDs), stable C and N isotopes, and zooarchaeological data from northwestern Patagonia. Based on these proxies, we discuss...

This paper explores how significant are the ecological and climatic variables to influence the stable isotopes of guanacos. Lama guanicoe bone collagen carbon and nitrogen stable isotope ratios are assumed as a macro regional average value in west Argentina, mostly as a baseline to model archaeological human diet. If stable isotopes on mammals refl...

Rheas have been an important food source to human communities in South America, providing meat and especially eggs, and thus playing a crucial role in the development of South American societies. Two extant species currently exist: Rhea americana (greater rhea) and Rhea pennata (lesser rhea). Both species occupy distinct geographic ranges except fo...

Short repeats (SR)play an important role in shaping seed plant mitochondrial genomes (mtDNAs). However, their origin, distribution, and relationships across the different plant lineages remain unresolved. We focus on the angiosperm family Solanaceae that shows great variation in repeat content and extend the study to a wide diversity of seed plants...

With the development of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in the 1980s, the application of molecular methods to archaeological questions has seen a rapid expansion in the last three decades, addressing major research topics including human origins and migrations, domestication and chronology. The recent introduction of next-generation sequencing...

The tribe Hyoscyameae (Solanaceae) is restricted to Eurasia and includes the genera Archihyoscyamus, Anisodus, Atropa, Atropanthe, Hyoscyamus, Physochlaina, Przewalskia and Scopolia. Even though the monophyly of Hyoscyameae is strongly supported, the relationships of the taxa within the tribe remain unclear. Chloroplast markers have been widely use...

The cox1 gene alignment. Nucleotide alignment of the cox1 gene (including its intron sequence) for all taxa included in the phylogenetic analysis shown in Figure 4. Sites of predicted RNA editing are in red in the reference sequence, while the putative endonuclease ORF is in green.

Taxonomic information and GenBank accession numbers. Taxonomic information and GenBank accession numbers of all taxa included in the analyses shown in Figures 3 and 4.

List of taxa from the family Solanaceae examined in this study. Taxonomic information, geographic origin or source (if known), collection number (voucher herbarium), and GenBank accession numbers of taxa from the family Solanaceae examined in this study.

Phylogenetic tree of Brunfelsia spp. based on chloroplast data. Maximum likelihood phylogeny of 7 species of Brunfelsia based on analysis of chloroplast ndhF and trnLF. Numbers above branches are bootstrap support values > 50%. GenBank numbers for sequences generated here are shown in boldface. Primers used for sequence amplification are from Olmst...

The most frequent case of horizontal transfer in plants involves a group I intron in the mitochondrial gene cox1, which has been acquired via some 80 separate plant-to-plant transfer events among 833 diverse angiosperms examined. This homing intron encodes an endonuclease thought to promote the intron's promiscuous behavior. A promising experimenta...