I never heard of xenoparity before, this is fascinating.
Supposedly it only evolved about 5 million years ago, and some colonies still rely on external populations? Nature is constantly finding new ways to undermine our attempts to think we know how shit works.
Or they’re all chimeras, but the frog part is hemizygous (so has to express the gene) and the piggie part is X recessive heterozygous (so has another allele that can suppress the gene), and the gene controls which end of chimeric scale (frog to pig) the body tips
First, thank you for pointing this out. I had to go and fill my brain hole with a bunch of information about this absolutely fascinating discovery. I really thought you were discussing some science fiction concept initially.
Second, what in the actual fuck did I just read?!?
Which only mean they aren’t a frog nor a pig, they’re an entirely new species where the male have a frog-like form and female have a pig-like form.
Maybe it’s a form of xenoparity like Messor ibericus, where one species is giving birth to an entirely separate species alongside its own.
I never heard of xenoparity before, this is fascinating.
Supposedly it only evolved about 5 million years ago, and some colonies still rely on external populations? Nature is constantly finding new ways to undermine our attempts to think we know how shit works.
Or they’re all chimeras, but the frog part is hemizygous (so has to express the gene) and the piggie part is X recessive heterozygous (so has another allele that can suppress the gene), and the gene controls which end of chimeric scale (frog to pig) the body tips
First, thank you for pointing this out. I had to go and fill my brain hole with a bunch of information about this absolutely fascinating discovery. I really thought you were discussing some science fiction concept initially.
Second, what in the actual fuck did I just read?!?
holy wtf
A form of sexual dimorphism. Honestly compared to real examples like the angler fish it’s not even that weird.
We could call them sometime like puppets or Muppets