Chinese scholars have confirmed that pigtail rats can also echolocate

Chinese pigtail rat Liu Qi and Ma Xiaofeng provided pictures

Recently, Shi Peng, Jiang Xuelong and Liu Zhen, researchers of the State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution at the Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, cooperated to tackle key problems, confirming that the rodent pigtail rat genus also has echolocation ability. The results of the research were published online on June 18 in Science.

Echolocation refers to a directional behavior in which animals carry out activities such as navigation and foraging by comparing the differences in the information of sound waves emitted and receiving echoes. Well-known echolocation animals mainly include insectivore bats and toothed whales. By analyzing pigtail rats, the researchers found that the number of independent origins and evolutions of adaptive complex trait echolocation increased to at least 6 times, becoming a typical case of trait convergence evolution in nature.

Shi Peng and Liu Zhen's research group has long been engaged in the research of convergence evolution and molecular genetic mechanism of echolocation, and Jiang Xuelong's research group has been engaged in the research of behavioral ecology and phylogenetic development and classification of pigtail rats. The results of the research published this time have been confirmed by three research groups using behavioral experiments, anatomical feature analysis, comparative genomic analysis, gene function experiments and other cross-research methods to confirm that the pigtail rat is a new mammal group that independently evolved echolocation adaptive traits, suggesting that biodiversity of adaptive complex phenotypes may have been greatly underestimated before.

Source: China Science Daily