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Global warming has driven Yosemite’s alpine chipmunks to higher ground, prompting a startling decline in the species’ genetic diversity. The genetic erosion occurred in the relatively short span of 90 years, highlighting the rapid threat changing climate can pose to a species, and putting the alpine chipmunk on a trajectory toward extinction.
Tag: genetic diversity
Salamander helps rewrite geologic history of Central & South America
March 20, 2013:
UC Berkeley’s David Wake and colleague Kathryn Elmer at the University of Glasgow analyzed the genetic variability of salamanders that had moved from Central to South America and concluded that they could not have diversified within the 3 million years geologists think the two continents have been connected. They think the Panamanian land bridge formed 23 million years ago.
