Sealevels and changing shorelines: impacts on contemporary genetic signals

What is it about?

Historical sea level change is a major driver of changing shorelines globally. Our work shows that the composition of the South African shorelines changed from rocky to sandy, which caused marine rocky shore populations to become fragmented during the last 60,000 years. This has left signals on their population genetic structure.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

The unique aspect of this work is that we carried out in a system that has a linear shoreline. So yes, everyone recognises that sea level low stands change the shape of shorelines, but this is not enough to understand how this affects marine species. We showed that the coastline composition changed from rock to sand along large parts of it and that this isolated marine species that need rocky shores to survive. This has left a mark on the genetics of these species, which we can pick up today.