Australian-led team discover reasons behind snakes' 'shrinking heads'

A small-headed sea snake foraging in waters off the
Ryuku Islands. Photo by Yoshitaka Tahara.

An international team of scientists led by Dr Kate Sanders from the University of Adelaide, and including Dr Mike Lee from the South Australian Museum, has uncovered how some sea snakes have developed 'shrunken heads' - or smaller physical features than their related species.

Their research is published today in the journal Molecular Ecology.

A large head - "all the better to eat you with" - would seem to be indispensable to sea snakes, which typically have to swallow large spiny fish. However, there are some circumstances where it wouldn't be very useful: sea snakes that feed by probing their front ends into narrow, sand eel burrows have evolved comically small heads.

The team has shown normal-shaped sea snakes can evolve such "shrunken heads" very rapidly. This process can lead to speciation (one species splitting into two).

The small-headed populations are also much smaller in absolute size than their ancestors, and these shape and size differences mean they tend to avoid interbreeding with their large-headed ancestors.

Dr Lee says, "A team led by my colleague Dr Kate Sanders (University of Adelaide) has been investigating genetic differences across all sea snakes, and we noticed that the blue-banded sea snake (Hydrophis cyanocinctus) and the slender-necked sea snake (Hydrophis melanocephalus) were almost indistinguishable genetically, despite being drastically different in size and shape.

"The slender-necked sea snake is half the size, and has a much smaller head, than the blue-banded sea snake.

"This suggested they separated very recently from a common ancestral species and had rapidly evolved their different appearances.

"One way this could have happened is if the ancestral species was large-headed, and a population rapidly evolved small heads to probe eel burrows - and subsequently stopped interbreeding with the large-headed forms."

Dr Sanders says the research could have wider implications in other scientific studies: "Our results highlight the viviparous sea snakes as a promising system for studies of speciation and adaptive radiation in marine environments."

Australians use ancient DNA to solve 320-year-old Falkland Islands wolf mystery

An illustration of the Falklands Islands Wolf by
Michael Rothman for Ace Coinage.

University of Adelaide researchers have found the answer to one of natural history's most intriguing puzzles - the origins of the now extinct Falkland Islands wolf and how it came to be the only land-based mammal on the isolated islands - 460km from the nearest land, Argentina.

Previous theories have suggested the wolf somehow rafted on ice or vegetation, crossed via a now-submerged land bridge or was even semi-domesticated and transported by early South American humans.

The 320-year-old mystery was first recorded by early British explorers in 1690 and raised again by Charles Darwin following his encounter with the famously tame species on his Beagle voyage in 1834.

Researchers from the University's Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD) extracted tiny pieces of tissue from the skull of a specimen collected personally by Darwin. They also used samples from a previously unknown specimen, which was recently re-discovered as a stuffed exhibit in the attic of Otago Museum in New Zealand.

The findings were published in Nature Communications today and concluded that, unlike earlier theories, the Falkland Islands wolf (Dusicyon australis) only became isolated about 16,000 years ago around the peak of the last glacial period.

"Previous studies used ancient DNA from museum specimens to suggest that the Falkland Islands wolf diverged genetically from its closest living relative, the South American maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus) around seven million years ago. As a result, they estimated that the wolf colonised the islands about 330,000 years ago by unknown means," says Associate Professor Jeremy Austin, Deputy Director of ACAD and co-lead author with Dr Julien Soubrier.

"Critically, however, these early studies hadn't included an extinct relative from the mainland, the fox-like Dusicyon avus. We extracted ancient DNA from six specimens of D. avus collected across Argentina and Chile, and made comparisons with a wide group of extinct and living species in the same family."

ACAD's analyses showed that D. avus was the closest relative of the Falkland Islands wolf and they separated only 16,000 years ago - but the question of how the island colonisation came about remained. The absence of other mammals argued against any land bridge connection to the mainland.

"The Eureka moment was finding evidence of submarine terraces off the coast of Argentina," says study leader Professor Alan Cooper. "They recorded the dramatically lowered sea levels during the Last Glacial Maximum (around 25-18,000 years ago)."

"At that time, there was a shallow and narrow (around 20km) strait between the islands and the mainland, allowing the Falkland Islands wolf to cross when the sea was frozen over, probably while pursuing marine prey like seals or penguins. Other small mammals like rats weren't able to cross the ice."