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Successful Merger of Butterfly Species

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the better-to-create-chaotic-futures dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) have recreated a real butterfly in the lab by crossing two other species of butterflies. This phenomenon, which is quite rare, is known as hybrid speciation. What is more surprising is that the hybrid butterfly has been created in just three generations of lab crosses. And BBC News tells us that the new butterfly species is a viable one, with its specific wing patterns which "make them undesirable as mates for members of their parent species." In fact, this hybridization, which occurred without any changes to the chromosome number, could mean that it is an important factor in the origin of new animal species. Read more for many additional references and a comparison of wing patterns between hybrids and wild butterflies."

7 of 85 comments (clear)

  1. Viable? by eikonoklastes · · Score: 1, Insightful
    the new butterfly species is a viable one, with its specific wing patterns which "make them undesirable as mates for members of their parent species
    How viable are they as a species if they are unable to find partners for mating? (or am I reading that wrong?)
    1. Re:Viable? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      How in blazes can that be considered informative?

  2. What is speciation ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    For a long time one argument of the creationists against evolution has been that scientists haven't witnessed speciation. Speciation was supposed to be the creation of a new species from another. The definition of a new species, at least as far as I was aware until recently, was that the individuals could not breed with one another and produce viable offspring.

    Maybe I am wrong on that definition of a species. I have seen numerous references to animals that can breed with one another as being different species. If you stuck to this defintion strictly, lions and tigers are just variations of the same species, as is nearly the entire dog family from wolves to coyotes to chihuahuas to great danes, and polar bears and grizzly bears.

    In any case, while this is cool it doesn't seem to me to be fitting the strict definition of witnessing speciation. The butterflies COULD breed with each other, the scientists just don't think they will try.

    BTW, before you mod me down, I don't believe in creationism or any of that claptrap == I'm not saying this as an attack on evolution is which clearly what happens, I just don't think this is that surprising a result. I'm sure wolves will mostly kill chihuahuas if they cath one, not mate with it, but I think they still count as the same species.

    1. Re:What is speciation ? by plunge · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It isn't misleading at all. Discussions about the difficulty in defining species has been going on for some time now, very publically. You can't use the term variety because you aren't dealing with simple varieties. You are dealing with separate and distinct populations that can and only interbreed under some very artificial and rare circumstances, and then not always reliably. Furthermore, you're dealing with things that have been classed as species since before evolutionary biology even existed.

      There are attempts being made to create new terminology: look at cladistics (which basically just uses numbers instead of names). But getting everyone to adopt the same system isn't easy: not because of some grand conspiracy, but simply because of habit, difference of opinion on the right way to do it, and so forth.

      But what "pretense" are you suggesting anyone is trying to maintain by calling a new type of butterfly (that doesn't interbreed with other parent species) a species? What's wrong or misleading about it?

  3. Re:Why this is important ... by DreadSpoon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That's not quite correct. It shows how two species can turn into three species.

    i.e., say you have some species the western part of some region, and another in the eastern part. As they migrate around, they may encounter each other and begin mating in the central part of the region. You now have the original species living in the west and east, and a new species in the middle.

  4. Re:Why this is important ... by enitime · · Score: 4, Insightful
    "Hmm. I thought that if the offspring weren't sterile, then the parents aren't different species -- they are, instead, subspecies. I'm sure there's some grey area in the definition, any geneticists care to help out?"


    Not only a gray area, there is no real definition of species. The consensus seems to be something along the lines of "distinct population groups that generally don't interbreed". Not that they can't, not that they don't, just that they usually don't.

    For example, I seem to recall that all (or maybe just most) of the members of the Canidae family (That's dogs, wolves, foxes, jackals etc.) can interbreed. I don't remember exactly though... it could have just been the Canis genus (dogs, wolves, jackals), or maybe I'm just mistaken. Anyone else know?

  5. Not wanting to mate makes a different species? by pookemon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I find it interesting that H. cydno and H. melpomene would mate, yet neither would mate with H. heurippa.

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