Dramatic changes often result in dead ends.
mammoths and hippos, which shrank to less than a tenth the size of their mainland predecessors, and the huge rodents and gymnures multiplied by over 100.
Now, a group of scientists led by iDiv and MLU has verified that the greater susceptibility to extinction commonly coexists with the emergence of these traits. The researchers used data on fossil and living island mammals, including over 1,200 extant and 350 extinct species of insular mammals on 182 islands and paleo-islands worldwide, to quantify how evolution towards dwarfism and gigantism may have affected the risk and rate of extinction.These findings point to a previously unrecognized result: species on islands were more likely to become endangered or go extinct if their body sizes suffered more dramatic changes, whether larger or smaller.
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