The rabbit, commonly known as a visitor in backyards, has evolved in a way to maintain a relatively small body size. In the Evolution article, “Why aren’t rabbits and hares larger?”, researchers Susumu Tomiya and Lauren Miller from UC-Berkeley sought to determine why rabbits and hares retained a small body size. Rabbits and hares are in the order Lagomorpha, along pikas. Compared to its sister clade, which includes rodents, rabbit body size evolution has been limited. This study does not include rabbits domestically bred, only wild populations of rabbits. Rabbits are an ideal group to study because of their limited diversity and extensive range across all continents, except for Antarctica.
Does this look like a normal pet cat to you? If so, keep reading; the true answer may surprise you.
When organisms reproduce, they randomly give half of their genetic information to their offspring. When two organisms from closely related species mate, the same process occurs. However, there is a significant issue. If this interbreeding between closely related species continues, it can lead to one or both species dying out. They will inevitably breed into one species, assuming they produce fertile offspring. This process is called hybridization, which can sometimes increase biodiversity by introducing a new species to the environment. This can also decrease biodiversity through changing environmental conditions and/or competition through a process known as introgression. This occurs when DNA from one species eventually swamps the genome of another species through interbreeding. Scientists from Switzerland and the U.K. projected how this process might be affecting domestic cats and wildcats in the Jura Mountains of Switzerland.
By: Felicia Cafua, Maddie Fancher, Sydney Ledoux, and Deirdre Boyer (Stonehill College, BIO323: Evolution, Spring 2021)
One of the most exciting parts of life is the diversity of colors that animals exhibit. When looking at the diversity of an animal’s color, many questions arise: Why are there so many different colors? Wouldn’t this attract more predators? How do these different colors arise? Birds are a fantastic example of the diversity of coloration; even in one bird species, there can be considerable variation between individuals. Parrots, in particular, show a great diversity of coloration and can have very intense plumage coloration. Plumage color is the color of the feathers covering the entire bird collectively. The exact reasoning for such a wide range of plumage colors is not well understood. Here we summarize a recent paper on plumage coloration in parrots that was published in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology.
By: Kalyani Twyman, Stella Martinelli, Devin Kiley, and Joe Monteiro (Stonehill College, BIO323: Evolution, Spring 2020)
This study aimed to investigate the morphological differences, or the differences in the form and structure of an organism, in three closely related dolphin species within the context of geography. The three species that were investigated were Delphinus delphis,the short-beaked common dolphin, Stenella coeruleoalba, the striped dolphin, and Tursiops truncatus, the bottlenose dolphin. These dolphins all belong to the same dolphin subfamily, Delphininae, and are all widely distributed. They can be found in both the tropical and temperate waters of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian oceans and in most of the world’s seas, including the Mediterranean. This study investigated the morphological differences in the dolphin’s mandible, or its jaw, across three species and a geographic gradient. This geographic gradient was from the North Atlantic to the Mediterranean. These two bodies of water are very different: the North Atlantic has dense, cold water that is characterized by low salinity, and the Mediterranean has warm water that is characterized by high salinity and variability in both ocean productivity and seabed structure. Previous studies have looked at both genetic and morphological differences in the three species within this area and have found significant differences when comparing Atlantic to Mediterranean dolphins within their species. This study aims to test two main hypotheses: (1) the three dolphin species show significant differences in the structure of the mandible when comparing organisms from the Mediterranean versus the Atlantic, and (2) these morphological variations follow a similar pattern across the discrete geographic areas in the three species. The scientists hypothesized that the three species of dolphins have experienced the same pressures from the outside environment in each of the distinct geographic locations and have evolved similarly.
By: Wafae El-Arar, Brandon Haffner, Grace Pickering, and Andrew Williams (Stonehill College, BIO323: Evolution, Spring 2020)
Due to rising sea water temperatures, a life-sustaining ecosystem in our oceans is under threat. Coral reefs are dying at a daunting rate, and climate change threatens many species that rely on the reefs. The coral species that are the architects of the reefs, such as Astreopora, or star coral, and Acropora, or stony coral, are some of many under threat. Researchers Yafei Mao and Noriyuki Satoh have been studying these species in order to determine their evolutionary history, and how more information on their evolutionary history can help to better understand coral reef biodiversity and support conservation efforts.
By: Kelsey DaSilva, Lauren Quintiliani, Cara Reynolds, and Mia Romano (Stonehill College, BIO323: Evolution, Spring 2020)
Welcome to the blog “What’s All the Buzz About,” serving you your daily buzz so prepare to be(e) amazed. This article examined honey bee queens of the species scientifically known as Apis mellifera. The common name for the species is western honey bee, and it is the most common honey bee species in the world. These bees are social insects, which means they exhibit a high level of societal organization. This is seen in their overlapping generations within a colony of adults, division of labor, and in the way broods, or groups of bees, work together. These characteristics make honey bees a model organism for studying social evolution. The article aimed to explore differences in observed egg size and the cause of egg size variation. Plasticity plays a large role here and is defined as the ability of an organism to be flexible and to change in various aspects based on factors in their environment. Plasticity occurs in organisms for evolutionary beneficial reasons. Understanding plasticity and variability in genes, specifically seen in the egg size of honey bees, is important because it serves as a model to understand life on earth, it can increase fitness, generate novelty, and facilitate evolution. This article helps to further understand evolution in a social context and provides a practical application of plasticity.
By: Claire Shamber, Lauren O’Regan, Julia Nuzzo, and Julia Tawil (Stonehill College, BIO323: Evolution, Spring 2020)
Periwinkle is not just a color; it is also an organism! Flat periwinkles are small sea snails that live throughout the northern shores of the Atlantic Ocean. Researchers have been interested in periwinkles because of their large dispersal across different shores and their potential to provide information about the intertidal zone. The intertidal zone is the area where the ocean meets the shoreline between low and high tides. This environment is subject to ecological speciation, meaning that the varying conditions of the intertidal zone can create differences between species. Speciation is the process of a single species splitting into two separate distinct species. Periwinkles offer a good look into how we determine whether two populations should be considered as their own species.
Gianna Amatucci, Nick Mulvey, Caitlin Welsh, & Cayleigh Shufelt (Stonehill College, BIO 323 Evolution, Fall 2019)
Predominantly
residing in the tropics of South America, guppies are small and colorful
freshwater fish. They are omnivorous animals, primarily consuming algae and
brine shrimp. Unfortunately, guppies are preyed upon by a number of larger
creatures, including birds, larger fish and mammals. While constantly having to
avoid such predators, guppies are always in search of a suitable mate to spread
their gene pools to future offspring. Alberto Corral-López and colleagues
studied how predation pressure, in addition to cognitive ability and brain
size, affected sexual behavior and sexual selection in guppies. The actions of
both large-brained and small-brained female and male guppies were observed by
Corral-López in order to study this phenomenon.
By: Emma Foster, Ana Alcantara, Apsara Gurung (Stonehill College, BIO 323 Evolution, Fall 2019)
While humans can taste a variety of flavors, this is not true for all mammals. Researches Dr. Kangli
Zhu and other collaborators recently published the research article
“The loss of taste genes in cetaceans,” and found that they are only
able to detect one out of five sensations of taste. These tastes include
sweet, salty, bitter, umami, and sour, but they can only taste salt.
Taste is important to mammal adaptations, particularly in cetaceans,
which are a group of organisms including whales, dolphins, and
porpoises. Umami and sweet taste sensations are important for finding
and eating nutritious protein- and energy-rich foods. Salt is also an
attractive taste and helps animals maintain sodium levels. Bitter taste
is beneficial for aversion to prevent ingestion of toxic or harmful
foods. Sour taste also prevents the ingestion of potentially unripe or
decayed foods.
Bottlenose Dolphin Image credit: https://ccsearch.creativecommons.org/photos/2a8c0f53-d8c8-41e8-9cae-5f8ff1948cce “A little smile for you” by San Diego Shooter is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Continue reading “Salty Cetaceans”
By: Adam Ziegler, Matthew Papp, Shivam Gandhi, Nikolas Steege, Bio323 Evolution, Fall 2019, Stonehill College
Let’s face it, we all sweat. Despite sweat being such a common and
prominent aspect of everyday life, not many people understand what
causes sweating, or why not all mammals sweat. A recent paper explored
the difference in human sweat compared to other primates from compiled
data sets across three phylogenetic models. The research focused on the
two glands that are primarily involved in sweating, the apocrine and
eccrine glands. By combining glycogen concentration, climate, and
distribution of glands, the authors were able to predict the eccrine
gland ancestral relationship. The results show exactly how humans have
come to evolve the current gland distribution and offer a previously
unstudied insight into our ancestors.
