Hey Bud, Spare Some Genes?

piggy submitted, created time 1 month 3 weeks (sciencenow.sciencemag.org)

A common European weed has turned its compact flower into an expansive, yellow-petalled blossom by borrowing a couple of genes from a close Italian relative. Researchers say the exchange is a rare documented example of beneficial genetic flow between species. It also challenges the notion that higher organisms must rely on their own genes to evolve.

The story starts three hundred years ago, when botanists introduced a yellow Sicilian flower called Senecio squalidus to Oxford, U.K. At the time, there was only one variety of a British weed known as the common groundsel (S

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Hybrid vigor between native and introduced salamanders raises new challenges for conservation

davis submitted, created time 1 year 3 months (www.pnas.org)

Hybridization between differentiated lineages can have many different consequences depending on fitness variation among hybrid offspring. When introduced organisms hybridize with natives, the ensuing evolutionary dynamics may substantially complicate conservation decisions.

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