Giant Pandas Are Not an Evolutionary cul-de-sac: Evidence from Multidisciplinary Research
TLDR
The latest and most advanced research shows that giant pandas are successful animals highly adapted to a specialized bamboo diet via morphological, ecological, and genetic adaptations and coadaptation of gut microbiota.Abstract:
The giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) is one of the world's most endangered mammals and remains threatened by environmental and anthropogenic pressure. It is commonly argued that giant pandas are an evolutionary cul-de-sac because of their specialized bamboo diet, phylogenetic changes in body size, small population, low genetic diversity, and low reproductive rate. This notion is incorrect, arose from a poor understanding or appreciation of giant panda biology, and is in need of correction. In this review, we summarize research across morphology, ecology, and genetics to dispel the idea, once and for all, that giant pandas are evolutionary dead-end. The latest and most advanced research shows that giant pandas are successful animals highly adapted to a specialized bamboo diet via morphological, ecological, and genetic adaptations and coadaptation of gut microbiota. We also debunk misconceptions around population size, population growth rate, and genetic variation. During their evolutionary history spanning 8 My, giant pandas have survived diet specialization, massive bamboo flowering and die off, and rapid climate oscillations. Now, they are suffering from enormous human interference. Fortunately, continued conservation effort is greatly reducing impacts from anthropogenic interference and allowing giant panda populations and habitat to recover. Previous ideas of a giant panda evolutionary cul-de-sac resulted from an unsystematic and unsophisticated understanding of their biology and it is time to shed this baggage and focus on the survival and maintenance of this high-profile species.read more
Citations
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Exceptionally low daily energy expenditure in the bamboo-eating giant panda
Yonggang Nie,John R. Speakman,John R. Speakman,Qi Wu,Chenglin Zhang,Yibo Hu,Maohua Xia,Li Yan,Catherine Hambly,Lu Wang,Wei Wei,Jinguo Zhang,Fuwen Wei +12 more
TL;DR: Morphological, behavioral, physiological, and genetic adaptations allow pandas to survive on their low-energy bamboo diet, and a unique mutation in the DUOX2 gene might explain these low thyroid hormone levels.
Journal ArticleDOI
Progress in the ecology and conservation of giant pandas.
TL;DR: The major advancements in ecological science for the giant panda are reviewed, examining how these advancements have contributed to panda conservation and form a foundation for increasing the application of adaptive management approaches.
Journal ArticleDOI
Panda Downlisted but not Out of the Woods
TL;DR: The giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) is no longer Endangered on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) storied Red List as discussed by the authors.
Journal ArticleDOI
Resequencing 545 ginkgo genomes across the world reveals the evolutionary history of the living fossil
Yunpeng Zhao,Guangyi Fan,Ping-Ping Yin,Shuai Sun,Ning Li,Xiaoning Hong,Gang Hu,He Zhang,Fu-Min Zhang,Jing-Dan Han,Ya-Jun Hao,Qiwu Xu,Xianwei Yang,Wenjie Xia,Wenbin Chen,Han-Yang Lin,Rui Zhang,Jiang Chen,Xiaoming Zheng,Simon Ming-Yuen Lee,Joongku Lee,Koichi Uehara,Jian Wang,Huanming Yang,Cheng-Xin Fu,Xin Liu,Xun Xu,Song Ge +27 more
TL;DR: By resequencing 545 genomes of ginkgo trees sampled from 51 populations across the world, this work identifies three refugia in China and detects multiple cycles of population expansion and reduction along with glacial admixture between relict populations in the southwestern and southern refugias.
Journal ArticleDOI
Seasonal variation in nutrient utilization shapes gut microbiome structure and function in wild giant pandas.
TL;DR: Ass associations using a gut metagenomic approach and nutritional analyses whereby diversity of the gut microbial community in the leaf and shoot stages was significantly different are found, illustrating that seasonal nutrient variation in wild giant pandas substantially influences gut microbiome composition and function.
References
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TL;DR: Using next-generation sequencing technology alone, a draft sequence of the giant panda genome is generated and assembled, indicating that its bamboo diet might be more dependent on its gut microbiome than its own genetic composition.
Journal ArticleDOI
Evidence of cellulose metabolism by the giant panda gut microbiome
TL;DR: The presence of putative cellulose-digesting microbes, in combination with adaptations related to feeding, physiology, and morphology, show that giant pandas have evolved a number of traits to overcome the anatomical and physiological challenge of digesting a diet high in fibrous matter.
Journal ArticleDOI
Whole-genome sequencing of giant pandas provides insights into demographic history and local adaptation.
Shancen Zhao,Pingping Zheng,Shan-Shan Dong,Xiangjiang Zhan,Qi Wu,Xiaosen Guo,Yibo Hu,Weiming He,Shanning Zhang,Wei Fan,Lifeng Zhu,Dong Li,Xuemei Zhang,Quan Chen,Hemin Zhang,Zhihe Zhang,Xuelin Jin,Jinguo Zhang,Huanming Yang,Jian Wang,Jun Wang,Fuwen Wei +21 more
TL;DR: Evidence indicated that, whereas global changes in climate were the primary drivers of population fluctuation for millions of years, human activities likely underlie recent population divergence and serious decline in pandas.