Ancient gene analysis reveals: Mastodon moved north to escape the heat
Brings inspiration to today’s species in response to climate change
Science and Technology Daily, Beijing, September 3 (Reporter Zhang Mengran) A team of Canadian scientists conducted a detailed analysis of the mitochondrial genome of the now extinct American Mastodon, and the results showed that in response to the Pleistocene (2.5 million-11,700 years ago) interglacial period During the warm period, this species has continuously migrated to the far northern latitudes of North America.
The results of the study were published in the British journal Nature Communications on the 1st, helping researchers understand the potential ecological responses of today’s species to climate change.
The American Mastodons once lived in the treey and humid areas of North America. Their remains have been found from the subtropical Central America to the Arctic latitudes of Alaska and Yukon.
The ice and interglacial cycles of the past 800,000 years have caused the cyclical expansion of ice sheets on about 50% of the habitable land in North America.
However, the response of mastodons to these changes remains to be understood.
Emile Capinski, a scientist at McMaster University in Canada, and his colleagues studied the fossil bone and tooth samples of the American mastodon preserved in various institutions in North America and performed complete mitochondrial genome sequencing on 33 samples (team The analysis also includes two other published genomes).
The researchers identified five different mastodon populations (or clades), two of which originated from the eastern part of the Bering Land Bridge (a region that historically connected Russia and the Americas).
They did not detect a chronological overlap in the samples of the eastern Bering Land Bridge population, indicating that the two branches may have expanded to this area separately.
This coincides with the interglacial period, when the warm climate began to support the emergence of forests and wetlands.
The research team also found that the northern branch of the continental ice sheet has lower genetic diversity than the southern branch.
They believe that similar populations that are expanding northward in the context of climate change may also include only some subspecies of the same species.
If the more genetically diverse southern populations eventually disappear, the northern populations may become vulnerable.