- Study at UC Berkeley suggest Penguin Origins at New Zealand and Australia, not the Antarctica.
- Researchers discovered a new lineage of penguins which are yet to be given a scientific description.
- Study findings reveal the climate change elements as reason for penguins’ population decline.
According to a recent study carried out at the University of California, Berkeley the penguins did not originate in Antarctica, rather they first evolved in Australia and New Zealand, reports CNN.
Study to trace the origins
Universities around the world in collaboration with museums conducted a study which analyzed blood and tissue samples from 18 different species of penguins to trace back the penguins’ movement and diversification over millennia.
The study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences said,“Our results indicate that the penguin crown-group originated during the Miocene (geological period) in New Zealand and Australia, not in Antarctica as previously thought,” they further added,“Penguins first occupied temperate environments and then radiated to cold Antarctic waters.”
The study suggests penguins’ origin in New Zealand and Australia around 22 million years ago;The opening of the Drake passage; the relative food abundance in Antarctic waters split off the ancestors of the emperor and the king penguins and facilitated their widespread across the sub-Antarctic Islands as well as the warmer coastal regions of South America and Africa throughout the Southern Ocean.
It also supports the theory of the king and emperor penguins being the “sister-group” to all other penguin lineages.
Today, the flightless birds still habit Australia and New Zealand — as well as Antarctica, South America, the South Atlantic, southern Africa, the sub-Antarctic, Indian Ocean islands, and subtropical regions.
Adaptability of penguins to climate change
The study highlights penguins’ adaptability to varying climates and the jeopardy caused by the modern climate crisis.
Rauri Bowie, one of the lead researchers and a professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley, in a statement from the university said,“We are able to show how penguins have been able to diversify to occupy the incredibly different thermal environments they live in today, going from 9 degrees Celsius (48 Fahrenheit) in the waters around Australia and New Zealand, down to negative temperatures in Antarctica and up to 26 degrees (79 Fahrenheit) in the Galapagos Islands” she further added “But we want to make the point that it has taken millions of years for penguins to be able to occupy such diverse habitats, and at the rate that oceans are warming, penguins are not going to be able to adapt fast enough to keep up with changing climate.”
The genetic adaptations that evolved penguins as cold- blooded creatures allowed them to survive in both subzero Antarctic temperatures and warmer tropical climates, took millions of years to evolve, contradictory to the present time frame that the penguins belong, where their population declines, says the new study.
Juliana Vianna, associate professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, in the UC Berkeley statement said,“Right now, changes in the climate and environment are going too fast for some species to respond to the climate change “.
According to the CNN reports, the different factors of climate change aggravate the present conditions of penguins.
- Melting icebergs, reduced sea ice, warming of oceans result in fewer breeding and resting sites for the emperor penguins also affecting the krill population which is the main component of their diet.
- Climate change has declined some penguin colonies in Antarctica by more than 75% over the past 50 years. The world’s second largest penguin colony(emperor penguin) has almost vanished.
- Storms of 2016 and the consecutive two years in the Antarctic ocean, Frequent and severe warm El-Nino in the Galapagos, Warming waters off the southern coast in Africa has caused penguin populations to drop drastically.
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Source: CNN News
