NEW YORK — Researchers have lengthy puzzled how iguanas received to Fiji, a set of distant islands within the South Pacific. Most modern-day iguanas reside within the Americas — hundreds of miles and one big ocean away.
They thought possibly they scurried there by way of Asia or Australia earlier than volcanic exercise pushed Fiji so distant.
However new analysis means that thousands and thousands of years in the past, iguanas pulled off the 5,000 mile (8,000 kilometer) odyssey on a raft of floating vegetation — lots of uprooted timber and small crops. That journey is regarded as a report — additional than every other land-dwelling vertebrate has ever traveled on the ocean.
Scientists suppose that is how iguanas received to the Galapagos Islands off of Ecuador and between islands within the Caribbean. Initially they thought Fiji is likely to be a bit too far for such a visit, however in a brand new research, researchers inspected the genes of 14 iguana species spanning the Americas, the Caribbean and Fiji. They found that Fijian iguanas have been most carefully associated to abandon iguanas from North America, and that the 2 teams break up off round 31 million years in the past.
The researchers created a statistical mannequin utilizing that info and different tidbits about the place iguanas reside right this moment and the way they could unfold. It steered that the iguanas most probably floated to Fiji from North America.
“Given what we all know now, their result’s by far essentially the most strongly supported,” stated Kevin de Queiroz, an evolutionary biologist on the Smithsonian Nationwide Museum of Pure Historical past, who was not concerned with the brand new research.
The analysis was printed Monday within the journal Proceedings of the Nationwide Academy of Sciences.
The journey from North America to Fiji may have taken a couple of months, however these desert iguanas would have been excellent passengers as a result of they have been adept at resisting dehydration and will have snacked on the crops underfoot.
“If you happen to needed to choose a vertebrate to outlive an extended journey on a raft throughout an ocean, iguanas could be the one,” stated research creator Simon Scarpetta from the College of San Francisco, in an e-mail.
Many Fijian iguana species are endangered, and an invasive inexperienced iguana roams the islands right this moment, stated research creator Robert Fisher of the USA Geological Survey. Determining the place these creatures got here from can equip scientists with the instruments to raised defend them sooner or later.
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