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The international research collaboration involving the research team led by evolutionary biologist Professor Axel Meyer at the University of Konstanz and researchers from China and Singapore was able to identify factors that led to the success of the seahorse from a developmental biology perspective: its quickness to adapt by, for example, repeatedly evolving spines in the skin and its fast genetic rates of evolution. The results will be published on 17 February 2021 in
Nature Communications.
Seahorses of the genus Hippocampus emerged about 25 million years ago in the Indo-Pacific region from pipefish, their closest relatives. And while the latter usually swim fairly well, seahorses lack their pelvic and tail fins and evolved a prehensile tail instead that can be used, for example, to hold on to seaweed or corals. Early on, they split into two main groups. One group stayed mainly in the same place, while the other spread all over the world , says Dr Ralf Schneider, who