All posts tagged: interbreeding

Interbreeding created Amazonian butterflies 200,000 years ago

Interbreeding created Amazonian butterflies 200,000 years ago

Published by skeptic

“Heliconius elevatus,” a species of Amazonian butterfly resulting from a cross between “Heliconius pardalinus” and “Heliconius melpomene.” KANCHON DASMAHAPATR Butterflies of the Heliconius genus have never been fans of discretion. For the millions of years they have occupied the valleys and forests of South America, being noticed has even been a condition of their survival. They have the good fortune to be inedible, a property they inherit from the passionflower plants on which their larvae develop. But they still have to make this known to their predators. Evolution has equipped them with colored signals to warn birds. “Danger, don’t touch!” These markings are shared by certain, sometimes distant species, in a mimicry that has been admired by naturalists since Charles Darwin. Read more Subscribers only Convergent evolution sheds light on study of two seemingly identical butterflies With the article published on Wednesday, April 17, on the Nature website by an international consortium of researchers, Heliconius will, once again, stand out from the crowd. This time, in the eyes of scientists the world over. The team, …

Wildcats and domestic cats began interbreeding in the 1960s, study suggests | Wildlife

Published by Sam

Humans weren’t the only creatures to fall under the sway of free love in the 1960s. After 2,000 years of keeping one another at paw’s length, wildcats and their domestic cousins began to interbreed about 60 years ago, a new study suggests. Doing so may have helped to protect their offspring against diseases harboured by domestic cats, but this interbreeding is now threatening the survival of wildcats as a distinct species. Domestic cats are generally considered to have descended from Near Eastern wildcats that prowled the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East back when early human farmers began storing grain. They arrived in Britain – where European wildcats also lived – about 2,200 years ago. Today, hybridisation between wild and domestic cats is pushing the Scottish wildcat population to the brink of extinction, because the genes that define them are being “swamped” by those from hybrid and domestic cats. “Not only are we at risk of losing a species from Britain, we’re potentially replacing it with hybrid and feral domestic cats that may be not …

Wildcats lived alongside domestic cats for 2,000 years but only started interbreeding 60 years ago – new study

Wildcats lived alongside domestic cats for 2,000 years but only started interbreeding 60 years ago – new study

Published by skeptic

You are unlikely to have seen one, but wildcats are still clinging on by a claw in Scotland. Most of the cats living in the wild in Scotland are hybrid cats with a mix of wildcat and domestic cat ancestry or feral domestic cats. But my team’s new study showed they lived alongside domestic cats for almost 2,000 years before interbreeding. One of our rarest and most elusive mammal species, European wildcats have been in decline across across Europe and Britain for the past few hundred years. Wildcats were lost completely from England and Wales by the end of the 19th century and today are only found in the Scottish Highlands. Habitat loss and hunting are two of the biggest threats facing this species across its range, but in Scotland, hybridisation with domestic cats is now the biggest threat to this population. Interbreeding between the two species is frequent now. This gradual erosion of the wildcat genome (the DNA instructions for everything that makes a wildcat a wildcat) may lead to the complete extinction of …