Evolution, Climate Change And Species Boundaries: Perspectives Through Time And Space, Alphagalileo & Proc. Biol. Sc. Bookmark and Share

Abstract: It is unclear how long it takes species to evolve and what the role of climatic change is in stimulating the speciation process. We traced a modern species of (...) a small mouse-like rodent, Lemmiscus curtatus, back in time to near its origin. We found that it took more than 800,000 years for what we recognize as the modern species to evolve, and that an out-of-the-ordinary global warming event in the middle Pleistocene may have stimulated the change to what we recognize as the modern populations of the species. Pleistocene climatic changes did not cause a new species to evolve (...).