Date: April 4, 2018
Source: The University of Adelaide
Emus that lived isolated on
Australia's offshore islands until the 19th century, including Kangaroo Island,
King Island and Tasmania, were smaller versions of their larger mainland
relatives -- and their overall body size correlated to the size of the islands
they inhabited.
Published today in the journal
Biology Letters, this was the surprise finding of a University of Adelaide
study that analysed the DNA and bone measurements of the now extinct small
emus, using both ancient and modern museum specimens. The study revealed that
the small stature of the island emus evolved relatively quickly.
Australia's iconic emu is the
only living representative of its genus but fossil evidence and reports from
early European explorers suggest that three island forms became extinct during
the 19th Century. While the King Island emu had already been shown to be of the
same species as the Australian mainland emu, little was known about the
evolutionary relationships of the others.
"Our results have shown that
all the island emus are genetically closely related to the much larger mainland
emu," says lead author Dr Vicki Thomson, an Australian Research Council
Discovery Early Career Research Award Fellow at the University of Adelaide's
School of Biological Sciences.
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