The study of insular variation has fascinated generations of biologists and has been central to evolutionary biology at least since the time of Wallace and Darwin. In this context, using 3D geometric morphometrics, I investigate whether the population of mountain hares (Lepus timidus Linnaeus, 1758) introduced in 1857 on the Swedish island of Hallands Väderö shows distinctive traits in cranial size and shape. I find that size divergence follows the island rule, but is very small. In contrast, shape differences, compared to the mainland population, are almost as large as interspecific differences among lineages separated by hundreds of thousands of years of a largely independent evolutionary history. Even if, contrary to what is documented in the scientific literature, mountain hares were present in HV before 1857, the evolutionary history of this population could not have start earlier than the end of the last glaciation (i.e., at least one order of magnitude more recently than the separation of L. timidus from other hare species in this study). My results, thus, suggest that the insular population is a significant evolutionary unit and a potentially important component of the diversity of Swedish mountain hares. This is interesting for evolutionary biologists, but even more relevant for conservationists trying to protect the disappearing population of southern Swedish L. timidus, threatened by changes in climate and the environment, as well as by disease and the introduced European hare (Lepus europaeus Pallas, 1778). Island populations of mountain hares, thus, represent a potential source for future reintroductions on the mainland and, as my research shows, an important component of variability to maximize the preservation of the evolutionary potential in a species facing huge environmental changes.
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
---|---|
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.zool.2022.126014 | DOI Listing |
Biochim Biophys Acta Bioenerg
December 2024
Faculty of Medicine and Health Technology, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland. Electronic address:
The temperate climate-adapted brown hare (Lepus europaeus) and the cold-adapted mountain hare (Lepus timidus) are closely related and interfertile species. However, their skin fibroblasts display distinct gene expression profiles related to fundamental cellular processes. This indicates important metabolic divergence between the two species.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPLoS One
August 2024
Department of Biology, Faculty of Medicine, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic.
BMC Zool
July 2024
College of natural and Computational Sciences, Department of Biology, Ambo University, Ambo town, Ambo, Ethiopia.
Gene
October 2024
University of Eastern Finland, Department of Environmental and Biological Sciences, Joensuu, Finland. Electronic address:
The non-coding regions of the mitochondrial DNAs (mtDNAs) of hares, rabbits, and pikas (Lagomorpha) contain short (∼20 bp) and long (130-160 bp) tandem repeats, absent in related mammalian orders. In the presented study, we provide in-depth analysis for mountain hare (Lepus timidus) and brown hare (L. europaeus) mtDNA non-coding regions, together with a species- and population-level analysis of tandem repeat variation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Mol Sci
May 2024
Institute of Veterinary Medicine, Faculty of Biological and Veterinary Sciences, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, 87-100 Torun, Poland.
Rabbit haemorrhagic disease viruses (RHDV) belong to the family genus , genogroup GI, comprising four genotypes GI.1-GI.4, of which the genotypes GI.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!