{"id":567725,"date":"2025-11-14T16:58:50","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T19:58:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=567725"},"modified":"2025-11-14T16:58:50","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T19:58:50","slug":"loss-of-genetic-diversity-encourages-extinction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/loss-of-genetic-diversity-encourages-extinction\/","title":{"rendered":"Loss of genetic diversity encourages extinction"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_567726\" style=\"max-width: 810px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright vertical\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-567726 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/RPF-notas-neanderthal-2025-04-800.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"996\" srcset=\"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/RPF-notas-neanderthal-2025-04-800.jpg 800w, https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/RPF-notas-neanderthal-2025-04-800-250x311.jpg 250w, https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/RPF-notas-neanderthal-2025-04-800-700x872.jpg 700w, https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/RPF-notas-neanderthal-2025-04-800-120x149.jpg 120w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span class=\"media-credits-inline\">Werner Ustorf\u2009\/\u2009Wikimedia Commons<\/span>Representation of a Neanderthal who lived in present-day Belgium 40,000 years ago, displayed at the Natural History Museum in London<span class=\"media-credits\">Werner Ustorf\u2009\/\u2009Wikimedia Commons<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<p>Neanderthals may have been wiped out due to difficulties coping with severe climate change or because of wars with a related species\u2014our species, the <em>Homo sapiens<\/em>. We do not know for sure. Researchers from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the Complutense University of Madrid, both in Spain, suggested another possibility: Neanderthals may have gone extinct as a consequence of a dramatic decline in their genetic diversity. The so-called genetic bottleneck, which can inhibit reproduction to the point of reducing population size or even eliminating a species, was identified through variations in ear canal shapes in fossils from Europe and Asia, as well as from modern humans. The study observed variations in ear structure shape and composition associated with a population decline that occurred roughly 40,000 years ago, when the Neanderthals disappeared. \u201cThe development of the inner ear structures is known to be under very tight genetic control, since they are fully formed at the time of birth,\u201d Rolf Quam of Binghamton University in New York, one of the study authors, told the website <em>ScienceAlert<\/em> (<em>Nature Communications<\/em>, February 20).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Decline in genetic diversity may have contributed to the extinction of the Neanderthals","protected":false},"author":475,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1651],"tags":[231,237],"coauthors":[785],"class_list":["post-567725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-notes","tag-evolution","tag-genetics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/475"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567725"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":567730,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567725\/revisions\/567730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567725"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=567725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}