GUEST BLOGGER MAX BLAKE: By the way, which one's pink?

GUEST BLOGGER MAX BLAKE

In the last year we have met a number of frighteningly intelligent young people who look certain to overwhelm the CFZ over the next few years. One of the youngest, and most frighteningly intelligent is Max Blake, who is the youngest speaker at the forthcoming Weird Weekend. He will be talking on the subject of how unknown animals, smaller ones at least, sometimes turn up in the pet trade. Today, however, he waxes lyrical on the subject of a new Galapagos iguana (and manages to get a Roger Waters pun in there). I am sooo proud of him!

It appears that Darwin, my hero though he is, missed something when he visited the Galápagos Islands in 1835. He did not explore the Volcan Wolf volcano on the island if Isabela, and thus a stunning species of pink land iguana was overlooked, which may provide evidence of the ancient animal's diversification in the archipelago.

The pink “type” was first noticed by park rangers on the slopes of Volcano Wolf on the island of Isabela in 1986, but it was thought to be only a colour morph or an external environment influenced change and it was not investigated further. 14 years later in 2000, scientists began to examine it, and came to some interesting conclusions. This was the only home of the "rosada" iguana, a newly identified species of the land iguana Conolophus.

Genetic analysis of the rosada and other species of land iguanas has been performed by Dr Gabriele Gentile of the University Tor Vergata in Rome show that the rosada iguana originated in the Galápagos more than five million years ago, and diverged from the island's other iguana populations whilst the archipelago was still forming. Interestingly, the Wolf volcano has been radiometrically dated to be only 350,000 years old, so the rosada iguanas had evolved before the volcano was created.

The iguana’s population has been estimated at around 100 individuals, making the species critically endangered.

Needless to say, this is a tiny amount of knowledge for such a stunning animal and more research on its habits needs to be done. Its numbers appear to be declining, so something needs to be done now to save this animal.