emperor butterfly penguins migrate throughout the fixed Antarctic continent , creating a single interbreeding population . And being one big circumpolar population ensures evolutionary unity in the metal money , according to finding published inNature Communicationslast week .
Robin Cristofari of Université de Strasbourg and colleagues sequenced the genomes of 110 emperor moth penguins ( Aptenodytes forsteri ) from six colonies cross the full range of the species . Some of these colonies are separated by 8,000 kilometers ( 5,000 Swedish mile ) of coastline . To consider small- and enceinte - scale leaf movement and migration , the squad try out three colony around Adélie Land in eastern Antarctica , two colonies from across the continent in the Weddell Sea area , and one colony from the Ross Sea neighborhood .
They discovered that emperor moth penguin are one single universe . Despite their disunited distribution , Saturnia pavonia penguins have a remarkable degree of what ’s called transmissible homogeneity : The entire coinage partake in a rough-cut gene pond thanks to their continent - wide dispersion . Most juvenile emperor butterfly penguin will leave their natal colony for about two to three year for a life at sea before attempting to multiply . The majority of penguin return to mate and raise chicks in the settlement they were born in . However , every multiplication , each colony receives , on average , between 0.7 and 4.2 percent of its population sizing in migrants . Based on their estimates , a settlement like eastern Antarctica ’s Pointe Géologie – with 7,000 fostering adult – would exchange between 260 and 300 migrants per generation with the rest of the continent .
As a undivided genetical universe , emperor moth penguins will follow a shared evolutionary flight with global mood change . They ’ll be similarly resilient and likewise vulnerable . But that also means that each colony of this near - threatened species has a much larger reservoir of genetic variety than investigator antecedently think . “ Diversity is the raw stuff of evolution , ” according to examine author Emiliano Trucchi of University of Oslo in astatement . “ So the more the good . ”
