Una hermosa idea
How to make a butterfly
Jun 15th 2006
The Economist
This butterfly is an example of a Central American species called
Heliconius heurippa. Or, rather, it isn't, for it was bred in a
laboratory by crossing two other species of Heliconius. As they report
in Nature, Camilo Salazar of the University of the Andes, in Colombia,
and Jesús Marávez, of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, in
Panama, have shown experimentally that H. heurippa is a species formed
by hybridisation in the wild. Two species have, in other words, merged
into one, rather than one splitting into two, as usually happens
during the course of evolution. H. heurippa does not crossbreed with
its ancestors because species-specific wing markings signal that it
does not belong to them. They thus avoid mating with it, so it is free
to carry on evolving by itself.
Jun 15th 2006
The Economist
This butterfly is an example of a Central American species called
Heliconius heurippa. Or, rather, it isn't, for it was bred in a
laboratory by crossing two other species of Heliconius. As they report
in Nature, Camilo Salazar of the University of the Andes, in Colombia,
and Jesús Marávez, of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, in
Panama, have shown experimentally that H. heurippa is a species formed
by hybridisation in the wild. Two species have, in other words, merged
into one, rather than one splitting into two, as usually happens
during the course of evolution. H. heurippa does not crossbreed with
its ancestors because species-specific wing markings signal that it
does not belong to them. They thus avoid mating with it, so it is free
to carry on evolving by itself.
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