At first, researchers thought there were as many as 14 species of spotted skunks, and as little as two had existed. In agreement, they most recently said there were four.
Now, according to a Smithsonian Magazine report, a group of researchers has made an extraordinary new discovery. Specifically, they found seven species of spotted skunks do exist.
Spotted skunks, this report describes, are "tiny acrobats." Their weight is less than two pounds, and they scheme to plant their front paws on the ground firmly, have their hind legs thrown into the air, and allow their tail to splay out, balancing in a handstand as their final warning before spraying.
This is an exaggerated form of defense mechanism these animals are sharing with their much bigger striped cousins and one that's making them tricky to catch and, consequently, to examine.
More so, being unable to catch them has resulted in a problem. Minus a wide range of specimens to investigate, scientists have not been able to perform genetic analysis to determine the number of species that exist.
In a new study in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, the research team described how it examined the DNA of more than 200 skunk specimens, some victims of collisions between wildlife and vehicles, and others from collections of museums, to identify what needs to be considered a species and what would be classified as subspecies.
7 Species Found
According to evolutionary ecologist Adam Ferguson from Chicago's Field Museum and one of the coauthors of the study, they expected to either verify the four species hypothesis or have it invalidated and make it three and not, in fact, expand it to seven.
Before conducting this new research, preprinted in BioRxiv, the study authors tended to differentiate spotted skunk species by examining their morphology, details such as differences in spotting patterns, and dental and cranial measurements.
However, such factors are quite similar among some of the seven species that were believed to be the same kind of spotted skunk.
Essentially, the absence of genetic data was examined among the species made this evolutionary ecologist want to examine more closely spotted skunk diversity.
Years of Collecting Samples
Collecting adequate specimens to perform an entire DNA study on the wide-ranging genus, which can be found all over Central and North America was not an easy task.
A physical Phys.org report said it would take years to gather enough specimens. Ferguson started to collect them while he was still working on his master's degree, which he finished in 2008.
Some specimens he got after they were killed in wildlife-vehicle crashes all over the United States, although he said, he still needed more.
Lacking any tissue specimens from Central America or the Yucatan, Ferguson and his team could not look at the entire history of the evolution of a spotted skunk, a critical component to understand the species existing at present.
According to mephitologist and skunk expert jerry Dragoo, the paper gives them in this field of biology, a better notion of how such things are evolving.
He added, there is a need to understand the ecology and the previous history of these animals in order to try to protect them.
Report on the spotted skunks doing the handstand is shown on World Teach's YouTube video below:
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