Seahorses are extremely poor swimmers. Surprisingly, however, they can be found in all of the world’s oceans. On the basis of almost 360 different seahorse genomes, a group of researchers studied how these special fish were able to spread so suc-cessfully worldwide. Based on an evolutionary tree of 21 species it was possible to reconstruct the dispersal routes of seahorses worldwide and to explain where and when new species emerged. The international research collaboration involving the research team led by evolutionary biologist Professor Axel Meyer at the University of Konstanz and researchers from China and Singapore was able to identify factors that led to the success of the seahorse from a developmental biology perspective: its quickness to adapt by, for example, repeatedly evolving spines in the skin and its fast genetic rates of evolution. The results will be published on 17 February 2021 in Nature Communications.
Click here for original story, How sessile seahorses speciated and dispersed across the world’s oceans in 25 million years
Source: Phys.org