Penguins are some of the slowest-evolving birds ever studied, a trait that could make them particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, according to a paper published today (July 19) in Nature Communications.
Researchers used genomic and fossil data to piece together the history of penguin diversification starting 60 million years ago, when the birds lost their ability to fly. The team found that although penguins have become highly specialized to thrive in their extreme environments, their evolutionary rate has decreased drastically, meaning that they may struggle to adapt to rapidly warming ocean temperatures and other effects of anthropogenic climate change.
“Modern penguins seem to be less well equipped to survive these rapid environmental changes than ancient penguins because of this decrease in evolutionary rate,” Vanesa De Pietri, an avian paleontologist at the United Kingdom’s University of Canterbury who was not involved in the work, tells National Geographic. “Have ...
