The latest blockbuster ‘Jurassic World’ brings
to our theaters a hybrid dinosaur. In their quest for the most terrifying
creature ever, the movie’s ‘scientists’ combine traits of different dinosaur
species to create the ultimate predator, which turns out to be big, insatiable…
and intelligent. Quite obviously, the movie goes far beyond the state of the
art of genetic engineering. That said, hybrids actually can be found everywhere
in the real world. And some of them are ‘designed’ by us.
A hybrid is an individual that results from the
combination of genomes of different species. Mankind has been raising hybrids
from old, by controlled pairings of animals and plants to obtain desired traits
in crops and cattle. For example, farmers have long been using mules (the
hybrid offspring of a male donkey and a mare) to help laboring the fields, and
lots of fruits, cereal crops and garden trees are hybrids selected by us to
better suit our needs. Have you ever eaten frog legs? Yes, you’re right! Edible
frogs are hybrids too.
When hybrid frogs enter the ecosystem, they may
outperform parental species, potentially leading them to extinction. Therefore,
understanding the processes of hybridization and delineation of ranges of
parental species and contact zones is critical for the conservation of involved
species. This is challenging because all these species look extremely alike,
and thus morphological identification is very difficult. For this reason,
molecular tools are necessary to solve biological questions involving
hybridization in water frogs.
A group of researchers from the University of Navarra,
the Natural History Museum of Madrid and the Doñana Biological Station (CSIC)
are developing sets of molecular tools to answer questions such as: ‘What is
the distribution range of P. kl. grafi? Did this hybrid klepton originate
naturally or as a result of human introductions? Can hybrids mate themselves and
produce P. ridibundus offspring? Is
the klepton displacing native P. perezi?
These genetic markers have proven useful to distinguish among the three species
within the complex and, by using them, we can assess the genetic variability of
individuals to trace the history of hybrid lineages and solve these and other
key issues.
So don’t panic in the theater. If a mad hybrid
threatens you, we’ll be ready for it… as long as it is a frog!
Gregorio
Sánchez-Montes
PhD Student
Department of Environmental
Biology, University of Navarra
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