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Rat Like Animals Seen on Some Florida Islands

The Bahamian hutia, a big Caribbean area rodent with a blissed-out disposition, presents a curious case study in how human food preferences tin drive biodiversity, sometimes shaping information technology over 1,000 years.

The hutia, which resembles a bristly beanbag, flourished in the Bahamas for millennia, the islands' only native terrestrial mammal. Today, simply 1 population of Geocapromys ingrahami remains, divided among the scrubland and limestone cliffs of three small cays, and the species is considered vulnerable by the International Spousal relationship for Conservation of Nature.

Humans have played a prominent and paradoxical role in the hutia'south boom-to-bust story, according to a new study led past Florida Museum of Natural History researchers.

hutia museum specimen — The Bahamian hutia, a nocturnal rodent that grows up to two anxiety long, once lived beyond the Bahamian archipelago, but today is only institute on three pocket-size cays.
Photo courtesy of Illustratedjc, CC BY-SA 4.0

Hutias were a savory source of red meat for the Lucayans, the islands' earliest inhabitants, who arrived around Advert 800-1000. At present, ancient Deoxyribonucleic acid and radiocarbon dating suggest the Lucayans transported hutias from the Great Bahama Bank – where hutias landed during the concluding water ice age, likely after rafting from Cuba – to Bahamian islands hutias had not inhabited previously, exploiting them as nutrient. The findings illuminate how humans historically and actively shaped hutia diversity and distribution.

"Nosotros're a funny, picky species with food," said Michelle LeFebvre, Florida Museum banana curator of South Florida archaeology and ethnography. "Our preference for what we eat has probably had a much bigger affect on global biodiversity over fourth dimension than we capeesh, and hutias provide one example of that."

Nether Lucayan care, hutia populations thrived. But when Europeans landed in the Bahamas, they introduced new predators, such as cats, and competitors like rats and mice. Evolution subsequently degraded hutia habitat, and the species may have vanished if conservationists had not moved hutias to protected areas.

"We have not stopped messing with hutias over the past one,000 years. Nosotros can't help ourselves," said the study's pb writer Jessica Oswald, a postdoctoral researcher at the Florida Museum and the University of Nevada-Reno. "For better or worse, Bahamian hutias are only live today because of humans. Nosotros moved them to tiny islands where they're protected, and probably the only way they are going to survive is if they alive on cays devoid of people."

Oswald and David Steadman, Florida Museum curator of ornithology, ofttimes found hutia fossils in the roosts of now-extinct behemothic owls on Groovy Bahama Bank, but hutias were notably absent-minded from pre-homo fossil sites on Bahamian islands beyond that bank. Meanwhile, LeFebvre was studying hutia basic excavated from ancient Lucayan trash heaps and found evidence that certain hutia populations were eating crops, such as corn.

These hutia fossils were collected in a cave on Eleuthera on the Great Bahama Bank. Researchers often find hutia basic in the roosts of the now-extinct giant owl, Tyto pollens, a predator that stood more than than 3 feet tall.

These hutia bones were excavated from an aboriginal trash heap on the Turks and Caicos Islands, evidence that early inhabitants exploited the rodents as food.

The researchers began comparing notes and decided to investigate the patterns they were uncovering by conducting the kickoff ancient Deoxyribonucleic acid study of the Bahamian hutia.

"We knew we had a question to chase," LeFebvre said. "And then it turned out that there was a major homo footprint."

Traces of human influence in hutia DNA

While Yard. ingrahami is the only hutia in the Bahamas, Cuba is the historical and modernistic center of hutia diversity and home to 10 of the xiii species living today. More than than half of known hutia species have gone extinct over the by 12,000 years, only the group one time boasted a range of habitats and sizes, from a 440-pound heavyweight in the Lesser Antilles to a pygmy-sized species found on Republic of cuba.

Their temperaments also vary. Observing Chiliad. ingrahami, biologist Garrett Clough described it equally a "well-nigh peaceable rodent" – simply not all hutia species are mellow.

"On Cuba, at that place's one species people treat as a pet and other species that could scratch your eyes out," LeFebvre said.

The researchers' findings supported previous bear witness that the Bahamian hutia'southward closest living relative is G. brownii, a vulnerable species on Jamaica. Merely they hypothesize the Bahamian hutia is a descendant of a Cuban species that reached the Bahamas near ten,000 years ago when depression sea levels closed the altitude between the islands to about 12 miles.

"Because so many hutias have recently gone extinct, we will need more ancient Dna from extinct species to test this hypothesis," Oswald said.

map of the Bahamas — Today, the Bahamian hutia is restricted to a few small islands, marked with red arrows. Researchers successfully sampled for ancient DNA at locations marked with stars. The black bar below Long Island represents a genetic pause they uncovered between hutias from the northern and southern Bahama islands.
Prototype by Oswald et al. in Scientific Reports

Radiocarbon-dated fossils showed that hutias lived on the Great Bahama Banking company earlier humans arrived – but none of the fossils outside of the depository financial institution were older than about AD 1300-1400, several centuries later human settlement. The researchers too found a striking genetic similarity between a population on Eleuthera, an island on the Great Bahama Bank, and a population on Abaco, part of the Petty Bahama Bank. The two banks never continued, even when sea levels were at their lowest, suggesting people had ferried hutias across the channel.

"We would expect those two populations to be genetically singled-out because they're isolated, but instead, they look like they're from the same population," Oswald said. "Yous're unravelling a mystery with Dna from fossils and trying to figure out 'whodunnit.' That'southward what makes this and then fun."

A genetic split between hutias in the northern Commonwealth of the bahamas and those southward of Long Island is a puzzle the researchers intend to explore further.

"Did some kind of human pick impact that? Could other hutias have been introduced or made information technology over from Cuba?" LeFebvre said. "Genetics sets you on the path to answer those kinds of questions."

Taking the long view of hutia conservation

The Bahamian hutia was believed to be extinct before Clough traveled to Due east Plana Cay, a small strip of uninhabited country, in 1966. The hutias he observed there were idea to be the last remaining examples of indigenous Thou. ingrahami. This study suggests, nonetheless, that hutias may have been introduced to the cay by the Lucayans, LeFebvre said.

While the Bahamian hutia is a survivor, its existence is also delicate, susceptible to hurricanes, disease, invasive species and landscape changes. Its conservation needs identify its future in the hands of humans.

hutia bones — To assist boost the species' risk of survival, conservationists transplanted some of the last remaining hutias from East Plana Cay to Warderick Wells Cay and Trivial Wax Cay. This skeleton is from an individual from the Footling Wax Cay population.
Florida Museum photo past Kristen Grace

But the value in studies like this ane is the millennia-long view information technology offers conservation decision-makers, LeFebvre said.

"Considering truly long-term anthropogenic influences on biodiversity is a crucial stride to edifice and planning conservation efforts," she said.

For Oswald, a paleontologist and evolutionary biologist who is an good in ancient DNA assay, the project offered a unique opportunity to collaborate with archaeologists.

"The combination of these fields is powerful. Michelle had evidence that humans were transporting hutias, and and then we used information from an evolutionary field to aid answer these questions. It speaks to what you lot tin do when you lot bring together unlike fields."

The report was published in Scientific Reports.

Other co-authors include Steadman, Robert Guralnick and Brian Stucky of the Florida Museum, Julie Allen of the University of Nevada-Reno and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Ryan Folk of the Florida Museum and Mississippi State University, Nancy Albury of the National Museum of the Bahamas and Gary Morgan of the New United mexican states Museum of Natural History.

Funding for the enquiry was provided past the National Science Foundation and the University of Florida Ornithology Endowment, supplemented by the Community Foundation of Broward.

Sources: Jessica Oswald, oswaldj3@ufl.edu;
Michelle LeFebvre, mlefebvre@flmnh.ufl.edu, 352-273-1917