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Penguins originated in Australia and New Zealand — not the Antarctic, new study finds

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Penguins originated in Australia and New Zealand -- not the Antarctic, new study finds

However penguins did not originate in Antarctica, as scientists have believed for years — they first developed in Australia and New Zealand, based on a new study by researchers at the College of California, Berkeley.

The study, which was carried out in collaboration with museums and universities round the world, analyzed blood and tissue samples from 18 totally different species of penguins. They used this genomic data to look again in time, and hint the penguins’ motion and diversification over millennia.

“Our outcomes point out that the penguin crown-group originated throughout the Miocene (geological interval) in New Zealand and Australia, not in Antarctica as beforehand thought,” stated the study, revealed on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Penguins first occupied temperate environments and then radiated to chilly Antarctic waters.”

Penguins originated in Australia and New Zealand 22 million years in the past, researchers recommend; then, ancestors of the king and emperor penguins cut up off and moved to Antarctic waters, seemingly attracted by the plentiful meals provide there.

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These findings additionally help the idea that king and emperor penguins are the “sister group” to all different penguin lineages — including one other piece to the long-debated puzzle on the place precisely these two species sit on the household tree.

Then about 12 million years in the past, the Drake Passage — the physique of water between Antarctica and the southern tip of South America — totally opened up. This allowed the penguins to swim all through the Southern Ocean, and unfold extra extensively to sub-Antarctic Islands in addition to the hotter coastal areas of South America and Africa.

At this time, the flightless birds are nonetheless discovered in Australia and New Zealand — in addition to Antarctica, South America, the South Atlantic, southern Africa, the sub-Antarctic, Indian Ocean islands, and subtropical areas.

Throughout the study, researchers additionally found a new lineage of penguin that has but to be given a scientific description.

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Penguins are adaptable — however not sufficient for local weather change

The study make clear the penguins’ adaptability to altering climates — and on the hazard they now face in the trendy local weather disaster.

“We’re capable of present how penguins have been capable of diversify to occupy the extremely totally different thermal environments they dwell in at present, going from 9 levels Celsius (48 Fahrenheit) in the waters round Australia and New Zealand, all the way down to damaging temperatures in Antarctica and as much as 26 levels (79 Fahrenheit) in the Galapagos Islands,” stated Rauri Bowie, one among the lead researchers and a professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley, in a statement from the university.
The world's second-largest emperor penguin colony has nearly disappeared

“However we wish to make the level that it has taken hundreds of thousands of years for penguins to have the ability to occupy such various habitats, and at the fee that oceans are warming, penguins are not going to have the ability to adapt quick sufficient to maintain up with altering local weather.”

The group was capable of pinpoint genetic variations that allowed penguins to thrive in difficult environments; for instance, their genes developed to higher regulate physique temperature, which allowed them to dwell in each subzero Antarctic temperatures and hotter tropical climes.

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However these steps of evolution took hundreds of thousands of years — time that the penguins haven’t got now, as their populations dwindle.

“Proper now, modifications in the local weather and setting are going too quick for some species to reply to the local weather change,” stated Juliana Vianna, affiliate professor at the Pontifical Catholic College of Chile, in the UC Berkeley assertion.

The totally different components of local weather change culminate in an ideal storm. Disappearing sea ice imply fewer breeding and resting grounds for emperor penguins. The decreased ice and warming oceans additionally imply much less krill, the primary part of the penguins’ eating regimen.

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Some Antarctic penguin colonies have declined by more than 75% over 50 years
The world’s second-largest emperor penguin colony has almost disappeared; hundreds of emperor penguin chicks in Antarctica drowned when sea ice was destroyed by storms in 2016. Reoccuring storms in 2017 and 2018 led to the dying of just about all the chicks at the web site every season.
Some penguin colonies in the Antarctic have declined by greater than 75% over the past 50 years, largely because of local weather change.

In the Galapagos, penguin populations are declining as heat El Nino occasions — a climate phenomenon that sees warming of the jap Pacific Ocean — occur extra often and with larger severity. In Africa, warming waters off the southern coast have additionally induced penguin populations to drop drastically.

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