Hybrid butterfly between two different species

Appalachian Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly was once a rare species. About 100,000 years ago, the combination of two different species gave birth to hybrid butterflies while increasing their numbers, the researchers said.

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The team was surprised to find evidence that Appalachian parents are Canadian Tiger Swallowtail and Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterflies. This breeding is not the traditional way in which new species are born.

'How did this new species appear to be one of the central questions of evolutionary biology ', said Krushnamegh Kunte, a researcher from Harvard University. 'Breeding is quite common in plants, but there are very few cases that are carried out on animals'.

The Appalachian Tiger Swallowtail (also known as Papilio appalachiensis ) is a day butterfly belonging to the phoenix butterfly family only present in the Appalachian mountains, running along the eastern edge of North America.

A male Appalachian Tiger Swallowtail butterfly is sucking on the rhododendron flower on top of Spruce Knob, W.Va.

The same distribution range with them is the Eastern Tiger Swallowtai butterfly. This species likes to live in areas with warm weather and at lower elevations. Meanwhile, Canadian Swallowtail phoenixes are the opposite, they are often found in higher altitudes and colder climates.

Scientists conducted genetic studies of three species and determined that Appalachian contains both Eastern Tiger Swallowtail and Canadian Tiger Swallowtail genes.

Appalachian butterflies have retained the characteristics from their parents, including the ability to both live in colder climates and survive in warmer regions.

The butterflies cross between Canadian and Eastern species are likely to appear from 100,000 years ago."It's not a long time ," said Kunte, a researcher at the University of Texas, Austin. 'But we still find that Appalachian children have been isolated long enough to have some other genetic traits compared to their parent species . '

Researchers believe that most species are born from a gradual transformation of a species into two distinct groups, or from the accumulation of genetic differences. Maybe this is how the Canadian and Eastern butterflies became two different species about 600,000 years ago. The study was published in PLoS Genetics.