How isolation creates new types of animals

Islands are known for unique animal species, which you will not meet on the mainland. For millions of years of isolation, they managed to adapt to special environmental conditions. Author of the channel "Book of Animals" in Yandex.Zen "explains that it isolation with alive organisms.

Sea Dragon

In the Galapagos Islands, an unusual representative of Reptiles lives. Most of those familiar lizards prefer to populate forests, mountains, deserts, but among 3,000 species only one – Galapagos Sea Iguana – can be considered a real marine animal. Although its appearance does not correspond to model standards, it is ideally adapted to survival on volcanic shores.

Unlike other iguan, the sea is a huge flattened tail and a membrane between fingers. With such an upgrade lizard smoking perfectly, flexing his body from side to side. So that the excess of sea salt has created discomfort, special glands appeared on the head of the lizard to release fluid.

These reptiles are not only excellent swimmers, but also divers. At the bottom, they eat aqueous vegetation, they are protected from predators and flew from heat. Under water, Iguana is able to delay the breath for a whole hour. To save oxygen in this case, blood comes only to vital organs.

Iguana never leave the coast, holding close to the water by family groups. Each of them heads the old male. He jealously guards the plot not only from the uninterested guests, but also from young applicants, with whom, as if Baran, begins to be bent at any attempt to encroach on His harem.

Until the males fight for power, females compete with each other for sandy areas, which are very few on the islands. Iguan’s fertility is low, just one or three eggs per year. Therefore, it is necessary to displace all the "rivals" and give continuation.

Night hunters

Another island, Madagascar, – Paradise for unusual primates. Only there are still living lemurs, which are about 30 species. They are mainly a nightlife, but feed on ripe fruit fruit.

To avoid competition, some animals had to go to sophisticated ways to extract food. So, the other endemic of Madagascar, the rovonok, does not cause pleasant emotions, but the appearance is not the main thing in the dark. Big ears and eyes perfectly help her navigate in the twilight forest. A long, thin middle finger – a clever tool that performs the role of a hook to retrieve the insects and larvae of the bark cracks. The same finger rukonozhka pushes them into his throat.

This way of obtaining food made rukonozhku occupy an ecological niche "woodpecker" in Madagascar, in fact, like these birds, it destroys forest pests that are hiding in the trunks of trees.

Carnivore parrot

New Zealand also boasts an interesting endemic. Here lives an inquisitive parrot Kea, who earned the nickname "clown of the mountains". Funny jokes he will not tell you, but to get to the man and his stuff is quite capable. Their extinct relatives from Australia Kea has large weight – up to 1 kg – and a long, sharp beak.

Kea – Alpine parrot, which lives at an altitude of 1500 meters or more above sea level. It nests in the crevices of the rocks, not in the hollows, like other parrots.

Life in such circumstances, birds and adapted to the new food, and to the unusual behavior for the rest of parrots. Their diet includes not only the seeds, but also insects, worms and small birds. For farmers flock Kea – a real disaster. For a long time the parrots acted as nurses, eating sheep parasites, but soon became addicted, and the meat of his "patients". Piece by piece, they pinch off pieces of sheep, gradually tearing wound up scary sizes. Often the animals are killed by the beak of the parrot.

crymophylactic mosquito

It is not always insulation is done by separating the island from the mainland. Antarctica – a harsh place for survival. Now it does not shine fauna biodiversity and presented seabird and marine mammal. But if you look closely at the thickness of the snow, you’ll find those who do not expect to see on the icy land.

In Antarctica, live insects, which are considered the true land animals continent – Antarctic mosquitoes. As the cold-blooded creature to adjust to life in such frosts?

Antarctic Komar Most of Life spends in the form of a larvae, upholstered in moss, crevices or even on the bodies of penguins. These amazing creatures are able to survive dehydration, losing up to 70% moisture, which is deadly for the rest of insects. An adult Antarctic Komar is different from his bloodstand colleagues. These representatives have a black exoskeleton and completely lack of wings, and in someone’s blood they do not need them at all and prefer to eat with all sorts of algae, which can be found in the depths of the snow. Lives mature comar week and, after performing a reproductive function, dies.

Insulation in our time

Insulated animals can be observed in our latitudes. All known ordinary protein is no longer so red. Her habitat extends throughout Russia and Europe. Such an extended range affected about 16 subspecies. All of them are gradually insulated from each other, and some populations can no longer be freely cross, which indicates the so-called reproductive isolation. Several thousand years they will become separate species.

Such examples throughout the planet set. Sooner or later, it is necessary to deal with difficulties and look for a new habitat, isolating from related populations. Long barrier between them changes their behavior, appearance and even lifestyle – new species appear so.