As fast as a hare: Did intraspecific morphological change bring the Hallands Väderö Island population of Lepus timidus close to interspecific differences in less than 150 years?
: 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, 175...
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Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/11380/1287156 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.zool.2022.126014 |
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ftunivmodena:oai:iris.unimore.it:11380/1287156 2024-04-14T08:14:36+00:00 As fast as a hare: Did intraspecific morphological change bring the Hallands Väderö Island population of Lepus timidus close to interspecific differences in less than 150 years? Cardini A. Cardini, A. 2022 http://hdl.handle.net/11380/1287156 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.zool.2022.126014 eng eng info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/pmid/35561437 volume:152 firstpage:N/A lastpage:N/A journal:ZOOLOGY http://hdl.handle.net/11380/1287156 doi:10.1016/j.zool.2022.126014 info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/scopus/2-s2.0-85129730226 Accelerated morphological evolution Island rule Population bottleneck Procruste Shape analysi Animal Biological Evolution Climate DNA Mitochondrial Hares info:eu-repo/semantics/article 2022 ftunivmodena https://doi.org/10.1016/j.zool.2022.126014 2024-03-21T17:33:53Z : 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. 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 ... Article in Journal/Newspaper Lepus timidus Archivio della ricerca dell'Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia (Unimore: IRIS) Zoology 152 126014 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
Archivio della ricerca dell'Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia (Unimore: IRIS) |
op_collection_id |
ftunivmodena |
language |
English |
topic |
Accelerated morphological evolution Island rule Population bottleneck Procruste Shape analysi Animal Biological Evolution Climate DNA Mitochondrial Hares |
spellingShingle |
Accelerated morphological evolution Island rule Population bottleneck Procruste Shape analysi Animal Biological Evolution Climate DNA Mitochondrial Hares Cardini A. As fast as a hare: Did intraspecific morphological change bring the Hallands Väderö Island population of Lepus timidus close to interspecific differences in less than 150 years? |
topic_facet |
Accelerated morphological evolution Island rule Population bottleneck Procruste Shape analysi Animal Biological Evolution Climate DNA Mitochondrial Hares |
description |
: 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. 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 ... |
author2 |
Cardini, A. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Cardini A. |
author_facet |
Cardini A. |
author_sort |
Cardini A. |
title |
As fast as a hare: Did intraspecific morphological change bring the Hallands Väderö Island population of Lepus timidus close to interspecific differences in less than 150 years? |
title_short |
As fast as a hare: Did intraspecific morphological change bring the Hallands Väderö Island population of Lepus timidus close to interspecific differences in less than 150 years? |
title_full |
As fast as a hare: Did intraspecific morphological change bring the Hallands Väderö Island population of Lepus timidus close to interspecific differences in less than 150 years? |
title_fullStr |
As fast as a hare: Did intraspecific morphological change bring the Hallands Väderö Island population of Lepus timidus close to interspecific differences in less than 150 years? |
title_full_unstemmed |
As fast as a hare: Did intraspecific morphological change bring the Hallands Väderö Island population of Lepus timidus close to interspecific differences in less than 150 years? |
title_sort |
as fast as a hare: did intraspecific morphological change bring the hallands väderö island population of lepus timidus close to interspecific differences in less than 150 years? |
publishDate |
2022 |
url |
http://hdl.handle.net/11380/1287156 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.zool.2022.126014 |
genre |
Lepus timidus |
genre_facet |
Lepus timidus |
op_relation |
info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/pmid/35561437 volume:152 firstpage:N/A lastpage:N/A journal:ZOOLOGY http://hdl.handle.net/11380/1287156 doi:10.1016/j.zool.2022.126014 info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/scopus/2-s2.0-85129730226 |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.zool.2022.126014 |
container_title |
Zoology |
container_volume |
152 |
container_start_page |
126014 |
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