A new species of Sengi, a small, shrew-like
mammal about the same size a mouse, was discovered in Africa, and genetic
sequence comparisons show it is more closely related to animals much larger
than itself.
by John
Tyburski
Copyright © Daily
Digest News, KPR Media, LLC. All rights reserved.
Now with the
latest contribution to the debate on whether size matters, followers can
assuredly conclude that it does not when predicting how close two different
mammalian species are genetically related.
Researchers
with the California Academy of Sciences recently discovered a new species of
Sengi. The name Sengi is a Bantu-language-derived common name for the Macroscelidesgenus.
The newly discovered species was calledM. micus. The interesting thing
about M. micusis that it has a little protruding snout not unlike
the truncated elephant trunk.
The
researchers noted that during the identification process that the specimens
they were collecting from a remote northwestern region of Nambia were
substantially different from the sengis specimens in museum collections. The
scientists collected a total of 16 specimens from this region several times
from 2005 to 2011.
Genetic
analysis revealed that the species was, in fact, novel, as the animal’s DNA did
not match that of sengi specimens already on hand. What was even more
interesting though was the finding that the little furry creatures were not as
closely related to other mammals of its own size and general appearance (save
for the snout) as they are to elephants, sea cows, and aardvarks.
“Had our
colleagues not collected those first invaluable specimens, we would never have
realized that this was in fact a new species, since the differences between
this and all other known species are very subtle,” said Jack Dumbacher, Academy
Curator of Ornithology and Mammalogy.
The report describing
the research team’s work on M. micus is published in the Journal
of Mammology.
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