The fennec fox (Vulpes zerda)Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto
Past cross-breeding between desert-dwelling foxes in North Africa, could have helped them adapt to climate change, evidence from world’s largest hot Sahara desert suggests.
An international study published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, including researchers from South Africa, found that hybridization has the potential to rapidly introduce combinations of beneficial alleles or genetic variation upon which natural selection can act.
The team, led by Joana Rocha, a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Integrative Biology University of California, Berkeley, sequenced the genomes of 82 foxes in four fox species – namely Ruppell’s fox (Vulpes rueppellii), the red fox Vulpes vulpes, fennec fox (Vulpes zerda) and the pale fox (Vulpes pallida) – to assess mechanisms of adaptation to the hot Sahara Desert conditions.
The team found that the Ruppell’s fox and the fennec fox lose less water through the skin or breath, and the fennec fox can retain more water in its kidneys, compared to canid species in areas where water is in abundance.
The red fox’s range in less arid areas can overlap with its closest relative, the Ruppell’s fox, on the northern edges of the Sahara, a movement which is believed to be facilitated by introgression from Ruppell’s fox.
The researchers propose that genetic variation shared among core desert species is an important component of recent or ongoing adaptation to rapidly changing climates in foxes living at the edge of deserts. “Our findings may help address questions about the persistence and adaptive capacity of species challenged by desertification,” said Rocha.
