To investigate the new balance 574 sport population genetic structure in more quantitative detail we performed several rounds of AMOVA, employing different geographic clustering strategies. In the first stage, when only South American pumas were analyzed, ¦ st values were quite high and statistically significant, with strategy 1c yielding the highest overall ¦ st ( Table 3 ).

When North American (NA) and Central American (CA) samples were analyzed separately, their mean estimated t MRCA was 0.231 new balance 860v9 (0.102 0.387) MYA. Finally, we estimated the t MRCA for a subset of 24 NA CA samples that formed an endemic monophyletic cluster (see new balance 996 Figure 2A ), yielding a value of 0.037 (0.006 0.077) MYA.

The Bayesian skyline plot analysis revealed evidence of a very recent (ca. 8,000 years ago) demographic expansion in pumas ( Figure 4 ). The signal for this expansion was apparent with both data sets (full sample and South new balance 997h American pumas only), with only minor differences in the estimated parameters.

The mtDNA data set analyzed in this study allowed a deeper understanding of the matrilineal history of pumas, refining, extending and in some cases adjusting the inferences previously put forth by Culver et al. (2000) new balance 860v8 .

Our initial observation was that ND5 is indeed a very informative coding mtDNA segment for phylogeographic studies of felids, and that the longer segment employed here (relative to the one reported by Culver et al. , 2000 ) does provide useful additional information regarding this species' diversity and evolutionary history. For example, the ND5 data set used here contained 33 variable sites and allowed the identification of 28 different puma haplotypes, while the full data set employed by Culver et al.

(2000) , including ND5 , ATP8 and 16S segments, contained 15 variable sites and defined 14 different haplotypes.