Arizona Elk & Extinct Merriam's Elk

[dirtclod Az.]

Welcome to Az. NOW GO HOME!

 

[MTLabrador]

Damn nonnative super elk. The government has no business introducing nonnative species.

 

[Caseknife]

I hate to revive an old thread but wanted to provide some clarification on genetics as I do have some formal education in the area and just read an article on the idea that some merriam's elk survived and interbred with the transplanted Yellowstone elk. 1st the article I read took 82 samples of white mountain elk from a spread out area and 66 samples from the norther Yellowstone herd and the genetics matched. There was no indication of add mixture. The next question was okay then was Merriam's elk genetically different from rocky mountain elk to begin with? There are only 3 known Merriam elk specimens available. 1 in NYC, 1 in D.C. and the 3rd is just a rack that lives in Tucson. DNA was taken from the Tucson rack and it did show sufficient genetic diversity that had Merriam's elk survived and interbred that it should have been detected. The article said they were going to sample the D.C. and NYC samples later but I could not find results.

The physical differences (phenotype) you see in AZ elk compared to the Yellowstone herd is most likely due to climate, diet, population management and environment. Okay so here comes the tricky part. I'm going to tell you something that completely goes against everything you think you know about genetics and evolution. A change in environment can lead to very rapid and noticeable changes in animal appearance. IT is well documented, lizards of the same species have very different colors depending on whether they live on the dark rocks or tan sand just a few hundred yards away. The length and width of sparrow wings. Wings of birds living under bridges are shorter and wider allowing them to change direction faster and not get hit by cars. These changes are what we know and natural selection, but they don't mean a change in genetics. At this level, this very short time span, all that is really happening is nature is taking genes that already exist in a species such as a darker coat and making it more common, because it defers an advantage.

The changes that were used to track the genetic distance of Merriam's elk to Yellowstone elk and the same genetics used to tell you your haplogroup or your ancestry is for the most part due to random changes, that we call mutations, they often times have no effect on how you or an animal looks. In fact most genes don't have an effect on how you look & we still don't know what most genes do, if they do anything at all. These roll of the dice changes, we know, depending on the type of change, type of DNA, and species occurs on average every X number of years. Say for example every 5-6 thousand years or in some species there might be random mutations more often every 30-40 years.

Quite a first post, welcome to Hunttalk.

 

[appaloosa]

Damn nonnative super elk. The government has no business introducing nonnative species.

SSS!