Masaki Eda

Hokkaido University | Hokudai · Hokkaido University Museum

When secondary contact occurs between allopatric sister species, several evolutionary consequences are expected, such as reinforcement of reproductive isolation, hybrid speciation, de-speciation, introgressive hybridization, or formation of a stable hybrid zone. The Short-tailed Albatross (Phoebastria albatrus) is a vulnerable seabird that breeds m...

The chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) is the most conventional domestic animal whose main ancestor is the red junglefowl, found in Southeastern Asia and the southern part of China. Chickens were believed to have been brought to the Japanese Archipelago through the Korean Peninsula during the Yayoi period, but its exact age is unknown. Based on the...

The Laysan Albatross Phoebastria immutabilis (Rothschild, 1893) is a seabird species included in the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature as Near Threatened (NT). We sampled two feather mite species, Diomedacarus gigas (Dubinin, 1949) and Echinacarus petaliferus (Trouessart, 1898), from the three albatross, and provided th...

The short-tailed albatross Phoebastria albatrus , a globally Vulnerable species recovering from near-extinction, breeds mainly on 2 island groups in the north-western Pacific: Torishima and Senkaku Islands. Recently, it became clear that this is a species complex, composed of 2 populations (‘Torishima’ and ‘Senkaku’ types) that are distinct from bo...

Chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) is thought to have been introduced in Japan during the Yayoi period (5th century BC to 3rd century AD). However, according to historical documents and archaeological materials, chickens were not commonly consumed as food until the early modern period. Many remains identified as chicken have been recovered from the...

The Short-tailed Albatross Phoebastria albatrus (Pallas, 1769) is a threatened seabird widely distributed in the northern Pacific Ocean with its largest breeding sites on the Senkaku Islands and Torishima Island, Japan, which are separated by over 1700 km. A recent taxonomic revision based on morphological, behavioral, and DNA sequence evidence has...

Significance We studied goose bones from Tianluoshan—a 7,000-y-old rice cultivation village in the lower Yangtze River valley, China—using histological, geochemical, biochemical, and morphological approaches. Our analyses reveal an early stage of goose domestication at Tianluoshan. The goose population seemed to have been maintained for several gen...

The lower Yangtze River region in China was a centre of early Neolithic rice cultivation and animal domestication. It is also an important habitat for wintering birds; however, our current understanding of prehistoric avifaunal resource utilisation by human populations in this region is limited. To clarify the use of birds by early Neolithic rice-c...

Zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry (ZooMS) is a new approach that has rapidly evolved in the last decade and is used for identifying zooarchaeological bones from species such as mammals, fish, reptiles (sea turtle), and amphibians. However, owing to the predicted slow evolution rate of collagen within the class Aves, no attempts were made to ident...

The occurrence of cryptic species within a threatened taxon is rare, but where they do occur, understanding species boundaries is essential for planning an effective conservation strategy. The short-tailed albatross Phoebastria albatrus is a Vulnerable seabird that mainly breeds on Torishima and the Senkaku Islands in the western North Pacific. Alt...

Red junglefowl are regarded as the primary wild ancestor of domestic fowl and are thought to have been domesticated in multiple regions. The osteological microevolution of red junglefowl and domestic fowl during domestication, especially at the earliest stage, has still not been thoroughly investigated, despite the fact that a proper understanding...

Cetaceans have long been exploited as a key marine resource for subsistence in many parts of the world. The bones of cetaceans in archaeological deposits tend to be highly fragmented but can be distinguished from other mammals by their unique cancellous texture. However, distinguishing species of cetaceans from one another is difficult because of t...

The origins of chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) domestication have remained debatable for over a century. China, and particularly northern China, has been claimed as one of the early centers for the domestication of chickens, because many alleged chicken bones have been discovered at a number of archeological sites. However, the identification of...

Zooarchaeology is the branch of archaeology that helps reconstruct the human past using animal remains from archaeological sites. These remains are also useful for reconstructing the palaeoecology of animals. In Japan, although several archaeozoological studies have focused on temporal changes in the size and distribution of mammalian species, ther...

The lines and geoglyphs of Nasca are a series of drawings etched into the surface of the so-called Pampas of Southern Peru. Of these geoglyphs, there are 16 that depict birds. The bird geoglyphs mainly created during the Late Paracas and the Nasca Period (c. 2400 to 1300 years ago) and account for the largest number of geoglyphs in the Nasca pampas...

The origin of the domestication of chicken Gallus gallus domesticus is still a subject of debate. It principally originates from the red junglefowl G. gallus, which is distributed throughout Southeast Asia and South China. However, the prehistoric exploitation of chicken and red junglefowl in Southeast Asia has remained unclear due to a small numbe...

The origin of birds has been a fundamental and challenging subject in ornithology since the discovery of Archaeopteryx. Although the phylogenetic relationship between birds and crocodiles has been recognized since the beginning of discussion, researchers were unable to reached a consensus as to which was the ancestor of modern birds. Pterosauria, C...

Puffinus lherminieri bannermani is a small black-and-white shearwater, which is endemic to the Ogasawara Islands, Japan. The taxonomic position of this shearwater is contentious. It is treated as a subspecies of Audubon's Shearwater P. lherminieri or the Tropical Shearwater P. bailloni in some checklists, while it is as considered monotypic, as Ban...

The short-tailed albatross Phoebastria albatrus was nearly driven to extinction in the early 20th century, but is one of the most common seabirds found in coastal archaeological sites in Japan, the Aleutian Islands, and the Channel Islands off southern California. Today, this species nests on only 2 islands off southern Japan and spends the majorit...

Restoration or establishment of colonies using translocation and hand-rearing can be an effective tool for conserving birds. However, well-designed post-release evaluation studies for long-lived species are rarely implemented. We investigated the attendance and breeding attempts of hand-reared short-tailed albatross (STAL) Phoebastria albatrus chic...

Assortative mating is an important pre-mating isolation mechanism that has been observed in some wild populations of seabirds. The Short-tailed Albatross Phoebastria albatrus is a globally Vulnerable seabird that breeds mainly on Torishima and the Senkaku Islands in the north-western Pacific Ocean. Our previous studies suggested that two geneticall...

The chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) is the most widespread domestic animal in the world. However, the timings and locations of their domestication have remained debatable for over a century. China, and particularly northern China, has been claimed as one of the early centers for the domestication of chickens, because many chicken remains have be...

This reanalysis uses the zooarchaeological assemblage recovered from Spirit Cave to understand hunter-gatherer use and occupation at the site during the Pleistocene – Holocene transition. We analyze bone fragmentation, sample size, and relative abundance to establish the preservation and overall composition of the remaining fauna. Identification of...

Prehistoric hunter-gatherers in Northeast Asia lived along coastlines and made abundant use of coastal resources in their subsistence strategies. However, the extent to which they operated only along the coastline or sailed out into deeper waters for hunting and fishing remains rather uncertain. In this case-study, we reconstruct past subsistence s...

Late Pleistocene to Holocene terrestrial vertebrate fossils were excavated at a newly-found fossil locality, Maehira Fissure Site, Itoman City, Okinawa-jima Island, Ryukyu Archipelago, Japan. Location F1 in this site can be divided into three beds characterized by dominance of extinct deer (Cervus astylodon and Mutiacinae sp.), birds, and wild boar...

Lead pollution has increased over the past four centuries with industrialisation, urbanisation, and the use of motor vehicles. In Japan, lead concentrations in human bones of the Edo period (AD 1603–1867) from urban areas were found to be higher than those from suburban areas. Because most wild geese breed in the subarctic zone and winter in the te...

Through the re-analyses to the chicken bones unearthed from some archaeological sites and the trimming of the related researches, this paper pointed out that the past recognitions of the domestic chickens in ancient China were mostly questionable. Referring to the new research results and the new development in the verification methods of the ring-...

In 2011 the Black-faced Spoonbill Platalea minor census recorded a 22% drop in numbers from 2010, particularly at the known large coastal wintering sites. During this period, we discovered two new inland wintering sites for the species using satellite telemetry data, one located in China, where the individual followed the Yangtze river as far as Wu...

The ideal indicator of domestic individuals is the presence of traits that must appear in the first generation of the domestic lineage. Most wild geese are migratory, breeding in the subarctic zone and wintering in the temperate zone. If goose remains from archaeological sites in a non-breeding region are from individuals shown to have died during...

Greater White-fronted Goose Anser albifrons has a holarctic breeding distribution and is polymorphic. Three subspecies winter in the Palaearctic region, one of which also winters in the Nearctic region: European White-fronted Goose A. a. albifrons breeds in the far north of Europe and Asia and winters in the south and west of Europe; Pacific White-...

The palmaris longus muscle is one of the most variable muscles in human anatomy. During a routine anatomical dissection for medical students at Tottori University, we found duplicate palmaris longus muscles in the bilateral forearms together with the palmaris profundus muscle in the right forearm. The bilateral aberrant palmaris longus muscles were...

The Short-tailed Albatross Phoebastria albatrus is a vulnerable seabird species that breeds in two island groups in the western part of the North Pacific Ocean. In the 2006/07 breeding season, the world population was estimated at around 2,360 individuals: 80% of them breeding on Torishima, and 20% on two islets of the Senkaku Islands. The species...

Bryan’s Shearwater (Puffinus bryani) was described in 2011 on the basis of a specimen collected on the Midway Atoll in 1963. This specimen and another recorded on Midway in the early 1990s are the sole reliable records to date. Since 1997, we have found six specimens of a remarkably small Puffinus shearwater morphologically similar to Bryan’s Shear...

The Short-tailed Albatross Diomedea albatrus is a vulnerable seabird that breeds on Torishima, one of the Izu Islands, and on Minami- and Kita-kojima islands in the Senkaku Islands. An unringed bird has been observed at the Hatsunezaki colony on Torishima every year since 1996, even though since 1979 almost all birds hatched on Torishima have been...

The history of population structure is a key to effective wildlife management and conservation. However, inferring the history of population structure using present genetic structures is problematic when the method is applied to species that have experienced severe population bottlenecks. Ancient DNA analysis seemed to be a promising, direct method...

ヒシクイAnser fabalisは北極圏で夏季に繁殖し，温帯域で越冬する．形態学的観点から，日本には東北地方の太平洋側で主に亜種ヒシクイが，北陸地方の日本海側と霞ヶ浦周辺で主にオオヒシクイA. f. middendorffii が越冬し，出雲平野で越冬する個体群の亜種は不明とされてきた．本研究では，4ヶ所の越冬地（宮城県・化女沼，新潟県・朝日池，福井県・坂井平野，島根県・出雲平野）で脱落羽毛を採集し，ミトコンドリアDNA・制御領域の塩基配列を決定して，先行研究と比較した．その結果，化女沼の試料はすべて亜種ヒシクイなどの系統に，朝日池の試料はすべてオオヒシクイの系統に含まれ，形態学的観点からの亜種区分を支持する結果となった．一方，亜種不明とされてきた出雲平野の試料は遺伝的にはすべてオオヒシク...

Although the tandem duplication of mitochondrial (mt) sequences, especially those of the control region (CR), has been detected in metazoan species, few studies have focused on the features of the duplicated sequence itself, such as the gene conversion rate, distribution patterns of the variation, and relative rates of evolution between the copies....

The Black-footed Albatross Diomedea nigripes is an endangered seabird that is endemic to the North Pacific. The genetic structure of Black-footed Albatross populations on three of the Hawaiian Islands and on Izu-Torishima Island, Japan, has been studied previously, using the mitochondrial cytochrome b region. Hawaiian and Japanese breeding groups a...

Mitochondrial (mt) heteroplasmy in the control region (CR) of the black-faced spoonbill was investigated using LA-PCR. To avoid amplification of transpositioned nuclear genome fragment from mtDNA (numt), PCR product of the almost-complete mitochondrial genome was amplified using primers designed to anneal on the COIII gene. Then nested LA-PCR produ...

In the late part of the nineteenth century and the early part of the last century, the short-tailed albatross Phoebastria albatrus was in danger of extinction owing to feather hunting. In the middle of the last century, the total number of this species was inferred to be approximately 50–60 with breeding occurring only on Torishima Island of the Iz...

Zooarchaeological remains have been identified to species, using identification criteria based on specific morphological variations among modern specimens. However, temporal size changes in bones, due to micro-evolution and/or phenotypic plasticity, could distort identification of archaeological remains according to these criteria. We developed spe...

Many albatross remains have been found in the Japanese Islands and the surrounding areas, such as Sakhalin and South Korea. These remains are interesting for two reasons: numerous sites from which albatross remains have been found are located in coastal regions of the Far East where no albatrosses have been distributed recently, and there are some...