Scientists have found that some passion vine butterflies (Heliconius) share similar color patterns that help ward off predators because they actually share parts of their DNA as a result of hybridization somewhere in their ancestry.
Scientists have found that some passion vine butterflies (Heliconius) share similar color patterns that help ward off predators because they actually share parts of their DNA as a result of hybridization somewhere in their ancestry.
But a new study in Science provides evidence that the process of sharing DNA may be far more common than ever thought, offering a potential clue to how biodiversity took place.
An analysis of 20 butterfly genomes found evidence that many butterfly species — including distantly related ones — show a surprisingly high amount of gene flow between them, said James Mallet, professor of organismic and evolutionary biology in residence and associate of population genetics in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, the senior author of the study.
“DNA sharing had been shown in closely related species, but we wanted to probe deeper into the phylogenetic tree,” Mallet said. “What we found is really astonishing: introgression even among species that are distantly related. ‘Species’ are simply not what we thought they were, and now we have the data to show it. The evolutionary tree of butterflies is a complete morass of interconnectedness.”
Read more at Harvard University
Image by Nicole Köhler from Pixabay
