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from the Did-the-single-ancestor-self-fertilize? dept.
How much space do you need to evolve a new mammal? These worm-eating mice have the answer
To discover the lower limit, the team turned to islands, whose isolated locations often make for an ideal laboratory—researchers can usually determine which animals arrived there and which evolved there. Lawrence Heaney, an evolutionary biogeographer at The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois, worked for years cataloging mammal diversity on the Philippines's largest island, Luzon. He discovered that its 105,000 square kilometers hosted 66 mammal species, not including bats. Surely smaller islands could also allow new species to diversify, he thought. So he and his colleagues searched for just such a place. They settled on Mindoro, the seventh-largest island in the Philippines.
In 2013, they started an inventory of all the mammals there, including rats, mice, and the dwarf water buffalo. They set up live traps on the slopes of all five of Mindoro's mountain ranges to catch the smaller ones, including a kind of long-snouted, earthworm-eating mouse native to the island, on which they focused their initial analysis. After comparing their DNA and looks, the scientists realized the mice represented four separate species—three living on their own mountains, and one occupying the lowlands below.
Furthermore, the genetic analysis suggests that the four species evolved from a single ancestor that landed on Mindoro about 2.8 million years ago. That means the island is the smallest place ever documented to have evolved new mammals [DOI: 10.1111/jbi.13352] [DX] from a single ancestor, Heaney and his colleagues report today in the Journal of Biogeography.
Also at The Field Museum.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Bot on Friday May 18 2018, @08:14AM (3 children)
> from a single ancestor
asexual reproduction, then?
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 18 2018, @11:01AM
Single ancestor specie.
No. Not asexual.
Now you see what happens when we let incestuous relationships to flourish!
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday May 18 2018, @04:55PM (1 child)
ancestor [dictionary.com]
noun
1.
a person from whom one is descended; forebear; progenitor.
2.
Biology. the actual or hypothetical form or stock from which an organism has developed or descended.
You'd think a robot would be better at semantics than that!
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday May 18 2018, @11:31PM
OK is evolution from a single ancestor the default or the exception? Underlining the ancestry in the title tricks into assuming the second.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 18 2018, @10:54AM (1 child)
If the mice can produce fertile offspring they are the same species regardless of whatever they saw by looking at the anatomy and dna. Since "discovering new species" sounds better the definition of species is being adjusted to help.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Friday May 18 2018, @03:31PM
So coyotes and wolves are the same species then? They don't normally interbreed, but those coywolves colonizing the US from Eastern Canada didn't come from a lab.
But yes, as a rule of thumb at least you are correct - though you can often find corner cases if there's enough interbreeding between two different species that normally produce infertile offspring.
Now, where in the article do you see any implication that these mice can interbreed?
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by inertnet on Friday May 18 2018, @12:08PM (1 child)
He didn't look very hard then.
Interesting facts I heard from someone who has spent years on Mindoro island: supposedly rape doesn't exist there, because the mountain dwelling native men believe that women can 'squeeze off' their dick if they wanted to. Also it's strictly forbidden to marry a brother in law or sister in law.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 18 2018, @03:32PM
Are you implying that women CAN'T squeeze your dick off with their pelvic muscles? Maybe they need to exercise?
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday May 18 2018, @09:22PM (1 child)
Mindoro size 4,082 mi²
Galapagos size 3,093 mi²
Further more some of the Galapagos islands have species unique to themselves, varying from relatively close neighbor islands. The islands have thousands of plant and animal species, of which the vast majority are endemic.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 18 2018, @10:25PM
"Sammy Dimacutac, who ranked seventh in Occidental Mindoro, for the crime of rape, was arrested in Pandi town in Bulacan province." [inquirer.net]
"Man tagged in rape, murder cases in Mindoro arrested in CamSur" [inquirer.net]