14 DAY TRIAL // Over the past couple of decades, global warming has made its presence felt more and more, and species have been forced to adapt under this influence. The evolution has now been proven by a genetic study of mosquitoes.
Researchers at the University of Oregon investigated the fine-scale genetic structure of Wyeomyia smithii, which is a type of pitcher plant mosquito.
The analysis revealed that this species is indeed evolving right now, as an adaptation to the rapid climate change that is affecting Earth as we speak.
Global warming shifts weather patterns, influences precipitations and drought events, raises sea levels, and generally makes the world a hotter place.
Plants are growing smaller each year, while the ocean becomes increasingly acidic, and all of this is caused by our massive greenhouse gas emission levels.
Using Restriction-site Associated DNA (RAD), a high-throughput sequencing technique, the team managed to discover that these changes in the environment are affecting W. smithii as well.
Details of their investigation appear in the latest issue of the esteemed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
“This project demonstrates the power of genomics technologies, which can provide new knowledge about the vast array of Earth's species,” explains expert Sam Scheiner.
He is the program director of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Environmental Biology (DEB). The organization provided the funding for the investigation.
“Although this small mosquito has become the poster child for genetic response to climate change, its evolution during post-glacial invasion of North America has been a question,” adds PNAS paper coauthor William Bradshw.
“The RAD-Tag protocol has increased the resolution of genetic relatedness among populations by 100-fold over previous molecular approaches,” the expert says.
“Along with the ability to illustrate the fine-scale phylogeographic patterns in species with few or no prior genomic resources, this technique will have applications in fields from ecology and evolution to human behavior and medicine,” Bradshaw adds.
The PNAS paper was also coauthored by University of Oregon expert Christina M. Holzapfel, Kevin J. Emerson, Clayton R. Merz, Julian M. Catchen, and Paul A. Hohenlohe.