http://www.calacademy.org/sciencetoday/butterfly-genome/558294/ Breaking science news from around the world Tue, 30 Apr 2013 23:02:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 http://www.calacademy.org/sciencetoday/butterfly-genome/558294/comment-page-1/#comment-891 mmichelson Wed, 10 Oct 2012 14:41:42 +0000 http://www.calacademy.org/sciencetoday/?p=8294#comment-891 Yes, you are correct, but the devil is in the details, here is a scenario that appears to fit the data in several of these cases in Heliconius butterflies:
1) Very rare hybridization between closely related species that look pretty different allows these species to share warning color alleles (forms of a gene) for several different genes.
2) In hybrid offspring, the new alleles of these genes in some combinations confer a 'rough & ready' mimetic similarity to much more distantly related model species with which these butterflies do not hybridize.
3) Natural selection acts on the variation in the hybrid offspring, favoring those which more
closely resemble the model species, weeding out those that don't.
4) Voila! We have mimicry, and in some cases, since different warning-color forms tend not to mate with each other due to the overwhelming impact of color-pattern on mate-choice, sometimes this process may also lead to the formation of new species.
Durrell D. Kapan

]]> http://www.calacademy.org/sciencetoday/butterfly-genome/558294/comment-page-1/#comment-822 Rk Bose Sun, 05 Aug 2012 05:08:29 +0000 http://www.calacademy.org/sciencetoday/?p=8294#comment-822 Wait, does that mean inter-specific hybridization is what's enabling the mimicry? That's seriously cool.

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