Mass extinctions are a kind of biological lottery : Most lose, but few win the jackpot of surviving in a world with fewer competitors. And according to a study that has just been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ( PNAS) , this was precisely the case with frogs.
To the surprise of the authors of the new research, the three main lineages of these anuran amphibians – to which 88% of current species belong – emerged simultaneously after the catastrophic event, the impact of a comet or an asteroid, which wiped out dinosaurs and three-quarters of life on Earth about 66 million years ago.
Although the origin of frogs dates back to 200 million years, researchers have observed that it was just after the so-called Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction that their diversity exploded . They have reached this conclusion after analyzing the genomes of some 300 species and drawing up a phylogenetic tree – a graphic representation where the evolutionary history is captured – of these animals.
Experts believe they benefited from the disappearance of forests, as they saved resources and successfully adapted to microhabitats until vegetation once again covered large parts of the Earth.
The results of this study would also help explain why frogs that live in very distant points of the geography are so closely related , something that puzzled scientists: their three main clades or superfamilies ( Hyloidea , Microhylidae and Natatanura ) would have evolved practically at the same time. Same time.
References:
David C. Blackburn. (2017). Phylogenomics reveals rapid, simultaneous diversification of three major clades of Gondwanan frogs at the Cretaceous – Paleogene boundary. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
