With climate changes, polar bear and brown bear lineages intertwine

(Terra Daily, 15 July 2011) -- Polar bears' unique characteristics allow them to survive in one of the most extreme environments on Earth, but that survival is now threatened as rising temperatures and melting ice reshape the Arctic landscape. Now it appears that the stress of climate change, occurring both long ago and today, may be responsible for surprising twists in the bears' history and future as well. According to DNA evidence reported in the July 7th Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, polar bears and brown bears have mated successfully many times in the last 100,000 years. As a result of some of those pairings, the polar bears of today also have unexpected Irish roots. "We found that brown bears and polar bears, which are hybridizing today in the wild, have been hybridizing opportunistically throughout the last 100,000 years and probably longer," said Beth Shapiro of The Pennsylvania State University, noting recent sightings of hybrid adults in Canada. "Generally, this seems to happen when climate changes force the bears to move into each others' habitat. When they come into contact, there seems to be little barrier to them mating." The researchers used patterns in mitochondrial DNA sequence to trace the bears' evolutionary history. Mitochondria are cellular components with their own DNA and are passed on from mother to child. By extracting and sequencing those mitochondrial genomes from fossils collected from all over the world, the researchers were able to observe how the bears' maternal lineages have shifted in space and over time. They then correlated those patterns with changes in the environment and in the bears' habitats. "This approach provides a means to go back in time and directly measure the movement of species in response to past climate change," said study author Daniel Bradley of Trinity College Dublin. The study shows that the modern polar bears' maternal line (from female ancestor to their descendants of either sex) descends from a recent hybridization with an extinct population of brown bears that lived in the vicinity of modern-day Britain and Ireland, not from bears living off the coast of Alaska as many believed. That hybridization event most likely occurred just prior to or during the last ice age, they report. Posted by Amanda Graham – 15 July 2011; 12:14:21 PM – Permalink

This Page was last updated: Friday, July 15, 2011 at 12:14:17 PM
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