Mónia Nakamura Genetic exchanges among different fox species living in the Sahara Desert facilitated their adaptation to its scorching conditions. The team found a significant sharing of genetic material between North African red foxes and Rueppell’s foxes relative to Eurasian red foxes, and also between Rueppell’s foxes and fennecs. In particular, they discovered a long genomic region, spanning 25 million base pairs, that was shared between Rueppell's foxes and fennecs, but absent in red foxes, despite Rueppell's and red foxes being phylogenetically more closely related. This sheds light on why Rueppell’s foxes have more concentrated urine compared to red foxes from North Africa and Eurasia. For example, SLC12A2 – a gene that plays a vital role in the regulation of ion balance – is significantly less expressed in North African red foxes and Rueppell’s foxes, compared with Eurasian red fox.

Source: The North Africa Journal June 14, 2023 13:35 UTC