Carrie ArnoldThousands of miles from home in the steamy Amazon rain forest in the mid-1800s, the British naturalist Henry Walter Bates had a problem. M
Supergenes Bend the Rules of Evolution theatlantic.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from theatlantic.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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IMAGE: Supergenes govern colony social form in Solenopsis invicta (top left; SB/Sb alleles), heterostyly in Primula veris (top right; S/s alleles), and polymorphic female-limited mimicry in Papilio polytes (bottom right; H/h. view more
Credit: Image courtesy of Tanja Slotte. Photo Credits: Alex Wild (Solenopsis), Tanja Slotte (Primula), and Krushnamegh Kunte (Papilio).
While the term supergene may bring to mind the genetic hocus-pocus of Peter Parker s transformation into Spiderman, supergenes are actually fairly common phenomena in the realm of biology. A supergene refers to a genomic region containing multiple genes or genetic elements that are tightly linked, allowing genetic variants across the region to be co-inherited. Supergenes may arise when there is a clear benefit to inheriting specific combinations of biological traits together. Perhaps the most well-known examples of supergenes are sex chromosomes, which allow traits that are beneficial to the re