Mouse rides frog (oh, and hybridization too)

As I mentioned in class National Geographic is not just for Dentists waiting rooms, yard sales and dusty cabins.

The writing is always good and the photographs are usually stunning. Even if you don't get the print version their website is worth frequent visits. You can download hundreds of their photographs as wallpaper and can read lots of short articles on recent research.

(The mouse rides frog explanation is here.)

Also in the news right now is an interesting story about hybridization. In a mechanism much like Mendel (and even Linnaeus later in his life) had speculated it appears that sometimes a new species CAN be created by the hybridization of existing species. Although examples are known from the plant kingdom this is the first time anyone has thoroughly documented animal examples. Shown last year for Drosophila a paper published in Nature just a few weeks ago gave a second animal example, this time in a South American butterfly species.

Such hybridization is only likely to occur between closely related species (think about the many possible isolating mechanisms between most species) so don't expect frog/mouse hybrids any time soon.