The journal Science of The Total Environment (Q1) published a scientific articleauthored by an international team of scientists. It included researchers from Russia, Belarus, Poland and Germany. They found that the maximum genetic diversity of moose was formed in the territory of modern Siberia due to the mixing of species.
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The migration of elk from west to east over the last two thousand years has been associated with anthropogenic pressure.
As the press service of Tomsk State University reported, one of the authors of the scientific article was the head of the department of paleontology and historical geology of the TSU State Geology Department Andrey Shpansky.
He and his colleagues conducted the largest study of moose remains found in different years over a vast territory – from Western Europe to Alaska. The oldest known remains of these animals are estimated to be about 50 thousand years old.
“From Russia, samples were presented mainly from Yakutia, the Tomsk and Omsk regions, as well as from the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences,” said Shpansky. “The selection is very good, more than 650 samples. The age of most of them was established by our Polish colleagues using radiocarbon dating. It turned out , that the oldest specimens are not even 50 thousand years old, but more.”
The youngest elk in the study were those that lived in the last 150 years. The data obtained formed the basis of computer modeling, which made it possible to trace how the habitat of moose and their population changed over time.
It turns out that moose, both past and present, are influenced by a number of factors. First of all, this is climate change, which occurs regularly on our planet over not even millions, but billions of years.
Thus, in the Holocene, an increase in average air temperature forced moose to migrate from west to east. The study showed that the West Siberian Plain became a transitional territory – it was there that genetic exchange took place between European and Siberian-American species.
Andrey Shpansky and his colleagues conducted the largest study of moose remains. Photo: TSU
Climate changes, both warming and cooling, have brought some benefits to moose. They adapted to change faster than larger animals, which opened up a new niche for them.
For example, at the end of the Pleistocene – beginning of the Holocene, the planet was gripped by a global environmental crisis, due to which bison, mammoths and ancient rhinoceroses became extinct. But the elk, “attached to forests and floodplain thickets,” survived this crisis.
The new study also found that elk populations have been significantly influenced by human factors throughout history, with human factors becoming a major influence today.
Thus, scientists have found that the migration of elk from west to east in the last two thousand years was probably associated with anthropogenic pressure, man-made changes in landscapes and hunting.
“Nowadays, human pressure on the species is sometimes critical,” says Andrei Shpansky. “The elk is a large animal, very vulnerable to human economic activity: the development of a network of roads, oil and gas pipelines, etc. The dissection of traditional habitats by roads and overpasses limits the movement of elk within their territories and reduces the possibilities of feeding animals.”
In addition, moose often die on the roads, getting hit by cars, and are extremely affected by deforestation. As Shpansky says, the habitat of moose may become “spotty,” which will not bring any benefit to the species. Such problems are most typical for densely populated European countries and some regions of the south of Western Siberia with high population density.
Source: rodina-history.ru
