An extinct 136 thousand years ago, the species of birds, the "shepherd's cowherd", was reborn in the Seychelles.
The Cuvier shepherd (Dryolimnas cuvieri) lived on islands where there are practically no predators. It played a very bad joke with one of its species.
The shepherd's is a family of white-throated birds the size of an ordinary hen that inhabit islands in the Indian Ocean. They constantly colonized new isolated islands in the ocean. Such islands, though free from predators, but very often become victims of natural disasters. Birds unable to fly quickly die as a result.
One of the shepherd's species had the ability to fly, which allowed him to move to the Seychelles. On these islands, as a result of evolution, the bird lost its ability to fly. However, 136 thousand years ago, the atoll completely covered the ocean after the flood and the view formed there disappeared from the face of the planet.
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And then one day, the species of birds, the Cuvier's shepherd, which had died out more than 130 thousand years ago, was revived in the Seychelles. This event is due to iterative evolution. The discovery article is published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.
Iterative evolution is a very special case of parallel evolution, which consists in the development of the same species from the same ancestor, but completely at different times. This phenomenon is very, very rare, so all scientists were greatly surprised by the case of the “rebirth” of a bird extinct more than 130 thousand years ago. This is absolutely the first time in nature when iterative evolution has been observed for this particular genus, and one of the most significant examples in the history of all the birds of our planet.
Cuvier Shepherd (Dryolimnas cuvieri) / Photo by Alexandre Laubin
The shepherd's is a family of white-throated birds the size of an ordinary hen that inhabit islands in the Indian Ocean. They constantly colonized new isolated islands in the ocean. Such islands, though free from predators, but very often become victims of natural disasters. Birds unable to fly quickly die as a result.
One of the shepherd's species had the ability to fly, which allowed him to move to the Seychelles. On these islands, as a result of evolution, the bird lost its ability to fly. However, 136 thousand years ago, the atoll completely covered the ocean after the flood and the view formed there disappeared from the face of the planet.
')
And then one day, the species of birds, the Cuvier's shepherd, which had died out more than 130 thousand years ago, was revived in the Seychelles. This event is due to iterative evolution. The discovery article is published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.
Iterative evolution is a very special case of parallel evolution, which consists in the development of the same species from the same ancestor, but completely at different times. This phenomenon is very, very rare, so all scientists were greatly surprised by the case of the “rebirth” of a bird extinct more than 130 thousand years ago. This is absolutely the first time in nature when iterative evolution has been observed for this particular genus, and one of the most significant examples in the history of all the birds of our planet.
Cuvier Shepherd (Dryolimnas cuvieri) / Photo by Alexandre Laubin
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/451390/
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