Snakes "evolved faster and better" than their peers in an evolutionary singularity that allowed them to become one of the animal kingdom's greatest success stories.
A new study led by University of Michigan biologists conducted a huge genetic and dietary study of snakes to find out more about the way the animals evolved and what made them so successful.
Over 100 million years ago, a group of lizards diverged into legless forms. These newly evolved slithering reptiles then became masters of hunting and developed flexible skulls so that they could swallow prey whole. And so, snakes were born. Snakes then diversified to such a degree that there are now nearly 4,000 different species living on planet Earth today.
The new study published in the journal Science suggests that speed may be a large factor in how the species became so successful in the animal kingdom.
Following the genetic study, the scientists found how snakes evolved up to three times faster than their scaly relatives.
The snakes also went through huge changes in their feeding patterns, locomotion and their senses, the study reported.
This is clear when biologists consider the different species of snakes alive today. For example, there are venomous snakes that can kill with a single bite, and then there are pythons that have such strong bodies they can suffocate their prey before using the flexible ligaments in their jaw to swallow it whole.
That's not to mention other snakes that have evolved to burrow in search of scorpions to eat and tree snakes that prey on snails and frog eggs, the study notes.
"Fundamentally, this study is about what makes an evolutionary winner. We found that snakes have been evolving faster than lizards in some important ways, and this speed of evolution has let them take advantage of new opportunities that other lizards could not," University of Michigan evolutionary biologist Daniel Rabosky, senior author of the Science paper, said in a summary of the findings.
"Snakes evolved faster and—dare we say it—better than some other groups. They are versatile and flexible and able to specialize on prey that other groups cannot use," said Rabosky, who is also a curator at the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology and a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
The evolutionary tree of snakes and lizards showed that even though some lizard species adopted snake-like traits over the years, snakes were the only ones that had an "explosive diversification," the study reported.
One theory is that a snake's speed in diversification is down to something in their genes that allowed this rapid evolution in a way that was not apparent in lizards. However, the exact causes of this unique ability to evolve and adapt remain a mystery.
The study notes that there could be many factors contributing to their success story, but scientists may never completely get to the bottom of it.
"A standout aspect of snakes is how ecologically diverse they are: burrowing
underground, living in freshwater, the ocean and almost every conceivable habitat on land," Alexander Pyron, study co-author and an associate professor of biology at George Washington University said in a summary of the findings. "While some lizards do some of these things—and there are many more lizards than snakes—there are many more snakes in most of these habitats in most places."
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