Striking Amazonian butterfly is result of ancient hybrid event

When separate species mate, it’s often an evolutionary dead end. Even if breeding succeeds, it can lead to infertile offspring, such as mules, or to the two species gradually merging into one as they interbreed over generations. An Amazonian butterfly species represents a rare third scenario. In a study out today in Nature , researchers report that Heliconius elevatus —a red, black, and yellow butterfly found throughout the Amazon—is a genetically unique, reproductively healthy insect that resulted from an ancient pairing of two other, still-present butterfly species . The work contributes to a growing notion among evolutionary biologists that hybridization can sometimes increase, not decrease, the diversity of species within an ecosystem. “It’s part of this paradigm shift of appreciating that hybridization can be a constructive process,” says Chris Jiggins, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Cambridge who was not involved in the study. “It’s an old idea, but there haven’t been many examples to support it. This looks like quite a convincing one.” H. elevatus looks nearly identical to another nearby butterfly, H. melpomene , but is much more closely related to a third species, H. pardalinus , which wears a different wing pattern altogether. Based on certain genetic similarities between the two species, researchers had an inkling that H. elevatus might have obta...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research