If you ’re like many the great unwashed , you ’ve often thought , “ Boy , am I sure happy there are lots of types of spotted skunks . ” ( Us too . ) And thanks to science , we now sleep together whom to give thanks for this tremendous diversity : climate change . A written report on the gratifying - faced grass ’ strange history was release this week in the journalEcology and Evolution .
The western recognise skunk ( Spilogale gracilis ) is a push button - nosed , teentsy critter , maxing out at around just 2 pounds . To maximise its mephitis - dispersion powers , the stinkpot flings itself into a piddling handstand , waving its back leg and rear in the atmosphere as noxious gas sprays from a secretory organ under its prat .
For all its exotic appeal , S. gracilisis astonishingly local , making its home up and down the remaining side of North America from the temperate rainforest of the Pacific Northwest to the hottest desert in Mexico .
Speciation , or the splitting of one metal money into two , ordinarily happens when two populations of being are divided by some physical boundary , like a mountain or a waterfall . Because the two groups are living in slightly different environments , they face slightly different insistence , and eventually germinate into somewhat dissimilar creatures .
To find out if that ’s what happen withS. gracilis , the generator of the current subject collected deoxyribonucleic acid samples from 97 skunks in a range of habitats and areas of the American Southwest .
They find that the sens could be divided into three subtypes . But the subtypes are n’t separated by rivers or pot orbit , nor have they ever been . or else , the researchers say , the family was rive up by clime alteration a very , very tenacious time ago .
“ Western spotted skunks have been around for a million years , since the Pleistocene Ice Age , ” lead source Adam Ferguson , of The Field Museum and Texas Tech University , said in a statement . “ During the Ice Age , western North America was mostly enshroud by glacier , and there were patches of suited climate for the skunks split up by patches of undesirable climate . ”
It was mostly these shifting eyepatch of uncongenial terrain that kept the skunk folk apart . These findings are authoritative not only for buff of skunk history , but for scientists , conservationists , and insurance - makers who handle about where our planet and its inhabitants are going .
“ What we cognise about the past can inform what we expect to see in the time to come , ” pronounce Ferguson . “ Understanding these genetical subdivisions that happened as a resultant of changing climatical conditions can facilitate us husband stinker and other animals in the future . ”
