Famine reveals incredible shrinking iguanas
By Susan Milius
Marine iguanas in the Galápagos Islands are the first vertebrates shown to shorten and then regrow, say researchers in the United States and Germany.
The seagoing reptiles shrank by as much as 20 percent during a 2-year food shortage inflicted by El Ni±o, says Martin Wikelski of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In the Jan. 6 Nature, he and Corinna Thom of the University of Würzburg in Germany describe observations of some 6,000 Amblyrhynchus cristatus during four El Ni±os. They report reversible shortening in more than 100 individuals.