![]() The researchers did not find the same patterns of genetic diversity across the genome in the closely related band-tailed pigeon, which has a relatively small population of about 2 million native to western North America. The analysis revealed patterns in the passenger pigeon genome indicating that the species' low genetic diversity was the result of natural selection causing the rapid spread of beneficial mutations through the population and the elimination of bad mutations. We found that it wasn't just lower than expected overall, it was also more variable, and we were able to see where those regions of high and low diversity are in the passenger pigeon genome," said first author Gemma Murray, a postdoctoral researcher in Shapiro's Paleogenomics Lab at UC Santa Cruz. "What we did, which the previous study didn't do, was to look at variation in diversity across the genome. But where previous researchers saw evidence of an unstable population that had fluctuated between highs and lows, the new study reached very different conclusions. ![]() The researchers confirmed earlier observations of remarkably low genetic diversity in the passenger pigeon population. Shapiro's team looked at the genetic diversity of passenger pigeons, using DNA recovered from museum specimens. Paradoxically, their enormous population size may have been a factor in their extinction," said corresponding author Beth Shapiro, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz. "Passenger pigeons did really well for tens of thousands of years, and then suddenly they went extinct. One theory, which is consistent with the findings of a new study published November 17 in Science, suggests that passenger pigeons were well adapted to living in huge flocks, but poorly adapted to living in smaller groups, and the change in population size happened so fast they were unable to adapt. ![]()
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