By: Meredith Kime, Courtney Marcos, Sean O’Leary, and Nick Scolaro (Stonehill College, BIO323: Evolution, Spring 2021)
Ungulates: © XAttlexattle, shared under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license
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.
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