Researchers from Texas Tech University have been studying bats in St. Vincent, where Artibeus schwartzi is a rare example of the successful evolution of a hybrid mammal species.
Sometime in the last 30,000 years or so, two separate bat species colonized the Caribbean and converged on islands in the southern Lesser Antilles. One came from Mexico while the other traveled from northern South America.
They likely met a third species already there, and all were genetically similar enough to mate and create a rare progeny in mammals – a viable hybrid that could reproduce and was larger and more robust than its parent species.
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A. schwartzi is close in appearance to its parental species. But it’s bigger and more robust. The team discovered these fruit-eating bats on St. Vincent have a unique morphology and genetic makeup that’s probably due to historical hybridization events.The evolutionary history of this bat has been the subject of debate for nearly three decades, said Marchán-Rivadeneira.
“A number of researchers have approached the enigma of A. schwartzi using excellent data sets,” she said. “It was through the combination of their knowledge and advanced molecular techniques that this amazing story emerged.”
To find out more, read the full article at Texas Tech Today. The study itself is to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Edited to add a link to an article from Discover magazine:
A.schwartzi’s three-way chimeric genome is a rare find indeed. Some animal hybrids go on to establish new species, but such examples are rare, especially among mammals. Some scientists have suggested that the red wolf is a hybrid of the gray wolf and the coyote, but that’s been disputed of late. A couple of monkeys – the stump-tailed macaque and the kipunji – might also be hybrids, but the evidence for this is still uncertain. A.schwartzi is the clearest case study yet that hybridisation can give rise to new species of mammals.
Previous Green Antilles posts about evolutionary biology research in the Caribbean have been about hamlet fish, and lizards in both Martinique and The Bahamas.
[Photo: today.ttu.edu]
