There’s also some anthropocentric assumptions in that article. It refers to the two species’ mating as a mistake multiple times. But horizontal gene transfer, while resulting in higher mortalities of offspring, also has the potential to combine unique evolutionary solutions from different lineages into a single species. Just because it’s atypical doesn’t mean it’s a mistake.
Just because it’s atypical doesn’t mean it’s a mistake.
This stood out to me in the article. I even repeated it later to my partner later when talking about it. I’m very curious what the science says about this if it deviates from what they implied in the article.
TIL there were green jays.
The rest of it is also interesting
There’s also some anthropocentric assumptions in that article. It refers to the two species’ mating as a mistake multiple times. But horizontal gene transfer, while resulting in higher mortalities of offspring, also has the potential to combine unique evolutionary solutions from different lineages into a single species. Just because it’s atypical doesn’t mean it’s a mistake.
This stood out to me in the article. I even repeated it later to my partner later when talking about it. I’m very curious what the science says about this if it deviates from what they implied in the article.
This study explores a representative example of it across species of fishes. If you want a deeper dive try searching for HGT and synteny index.
Edit: Also conspecifics are members of the same species, while congenerics are members of the same genus. Another relevant search term.