Jon_Herron's blog

Transitional fossils offer tangible evidence of evolution. Examples include feathered dinosaurs, tetrapod-like fish, and the pterosaur I described in an earlier post. These relics, some of which were predicted before they were found, testify to dramatic changes in lifestyle, body form, and behavior. Lately, a terrestrial fish has me thinking about living species that, like these fossils, appear to be in the midst of evolutionary transitions. Yes, you read that right: a terrestrial fish.

My previous post concerned an apparently beneficial genetic variant, common in modern humans, that some researchers suspect we picked up via sex with Neanderthals. Attempts to find direct evidence that Neanderthals carried the variant have so far been unsuccessful. But other cases of beneficial variants acquired via hybiridization do exist. This is, for example, how the gray wolves of Yellowstone got their black pelts.

The publication last month of a draft sequence of the Neanderthal genome stoked quite a bit of excitement, much of it over the question of whether Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans ever indulged in hanky-panky. The query I want to focus on here is more specific. It concerns how modern humans acquired a particular allele for a particular gene. Did we get it from a Neanderthal during a romantic evening?

Earlier I mentioned examples of critters that lie to get what they want. Last week in American Naturalist Jakob Bro-Jørgensen and Wiline M. Pangle reported a new—and at least half interesting—example.