Mountain Formation Sends Evolution Peaking

The dramatic sight of a mountain range certainly serves to inspire those who behold it. Evolutionary biologists at the University of Michigan are telling us that mountains are additionally capable of inspiring a boom in a region’s evolutionary activity and its ensuing species diversity.

The conditions contained by a mountainous region are certainly ripe for featuring a full complement of fauna: within a relatively small area, temperature, moisture and vegetation regimes can run quite the gamut. Paleontologist Catherine Badgley, in a study appearing in Nature, suggests that it’s the very process of the mountains being formed that fuels the evolutionary engine.

Based on a review of the fossil records of the Rocky Mountains and the neighboring Great Plains, Badgley and her associate observed that a significant increase in the number of different species coincided with the timing of the seismic activity that served to build up the mountain range.

While the precise mechanisms for how this happens are not fully clear, it appears to go beyond the simple matter of different environmental conditions being created. The building of a mountain range will eventually create barriers that geographically separate members of a species, which will set the separated groups up for adaptation to the new and differing conditions on opposing sides of the barrier.

Photo courtesy of Steve Jurvetson, via Wikimedia Commons