• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

The Oldest Parental Split Of Any Animal, Plant, Or Fungi Hybrid Is A Fish

March 14, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

The big news recently broke that gars’ genetic history reveals they are “living fossils“, evolving significantly slower than any other jawed vertebrate. The breakthrough in our understanding of living fossils revealed why they’ve remained largely unchanged for tens of millions of years, and it means they can create viable hybrids with other species – even when they haven’t shared a common ancestor since dinosaurs walked the Earth.

Hybrids discovered between the Alligator Gar and Longnose Gar represent the offspring of genetically isolated groups whose last common ancestor existed 100 million years ago, making it the oldest identified parental split across animals, plants, and fungi. These hybrids are rare, but not unheard of. By a stroke of sweet serendipity, one of study co-author Solomon David’s graduate students – Kati Wright of Nicholls State University – actually caught one the same week as the living fossil paper’s publication. 

Advertisement

“The hybrids resemble the body of a large Longnose Gar, just with a wider snout,” Wright explained to IFLScience. “Their ganoid scales even look different from Alligator Gar.”

An alligator gar (left) and the hybrid Alligator Gar x Longnose Gar.

An Alligator Gar (left) and the hybrid Alligator Gar x Longnose Gar (right).

Images credit: Kati Wright

Project collaborator and Alligator Gar expert Dan Daugherty of Texas Parks & Wildlife told Wright that hybrids are caught here around 1-2 percent of the time, making this a “rare and exciting” catch. It wasn’t the fish’s first rodeo, mind, having already been caught and tagged for a different study.

Wright is a member of GarLab, which has relocated to the University of Minnesota with David, who is the lab’s principal investigator and has lots of experience working with gars in captivity.

“I’ve handled and cared for other gar hybrids in aquariums,” he told IFLScience. “Their patterns can be a stunning combination of the parent species, and in some cases, like the Spotted x Alligator Gar, look like something completely new, with the almost dalmatian black and white blotches.” 

“The Alligator Gar ‘side of the family’ seems to show through in aquarium individuals, with the hybrids being somewhat aggressive. Shortnose x Alligator Gar hybrids tend to have the aggression of the Alligator Gar along with the more skittish nature of Shortnose Gars. Morphologically, they show intermediate characteristics of the parents, especially in their snouts.”

The ancient splits of the Alligator Gar x Longnose Gar demonstrates the slow rate of evolution seen among gars – a group of primitive fishes David says are often wrongfully considered “trash fish”, and yet we stand to learn so much from them. It’s thought they may have super-efficient DNA repair that could explain the low species diversity, and if so, could inform research into human health and cancer.

Getting there involves transgenic and toxicological experiments of other vertebrates and gars, but by all accounts, working with these animals makes for an exhilarating job, if not a little Jaws‘ish.

Photo shows Hybrid Alligator Gar x Longnose Gar above, Alligator Gar below for comparison. Inset shows the profile of hybrid gar.

Photo shows Hybrid Alligator Gar x Longnose Gar above, Alligator Gar below for comparison. Inset shows the profile of hybrid gar.

Image credit: Kati Wright

“One time GarLab was fishing with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for Alligator Gar,” said Wright. “We pulled in a gillnet with seven 7-foot [2.1-meter], 140-pound [64-kilogram] Alligator Gars and one Longnose Gar into this tiny jon boat with four people in it! I thought, ‘We really are gonna need a bigger boat.’”

Advertisement

“I was on the shore as their boat approached, filled with GARgantuan Alligator Gars,” added David. “It was an awesome sight. Luckily gars breathe air, so they were just fine as our team quickly processed them (measured, tagged, and released). They don’t really make boat livewells the size of Alligator Gars!”

Move aside, Snakes On A Plane, we want to see Gars On A Boat.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Soccer – FIFA backs down on threat to fine Premier clubs who play South American players
  2. U.S. House passes abortion rights bill, outlook poor in Senate
  3. UBS clients raise $650 million for biggest yet biotech impact fund
  4. This Is What Cannabis Looks Like Under A Microscope – You Might Be Surprised

Source Link: The Oldest Parental Split Of Any Animal, Plant, Or Fungi Hybrid Is A Fish

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • World’s Oldest Pots: 20,000-Year-Old Vessels May Have Been Used For Cooking Clams Or Brewing Beer
  • “The Body Is Slowly And Continuously Heated”: 14,000-Year-Old Smoked Mummies Are World’s Oldest
  • Pizza Slices, Polaroid Pictures, And Over 300 Hats: What’s Left Behind In Yellowstone’s Hydrothermal Areas?
  • The Mathematical Paradox That Lets You Create Something From Nothing
  • Ancient Asteroid Ripped Apart In Collision Had Flowing Water
  • Flying Foxes Include The World’s Biggest Bat And The Largest Mammal Capable Of True Flight
  • NASA Responds To Claims That Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Is An Advanced Alien Spacecraft
  • Millions Of Tons Of Gold Are In Earth’s Oceans, Potentially Worth Over $2 Quadrillion
  • The Race Back To The Moon: US Vs China, Will What Happens Next Change The Future?
  • NOAA Issues G3 Geomagnetic Storm Warning As 500,000 Kilometer Hole Sends Solar Wind At Earth
  • Lasting 776 Days, This Is The Longest Case Of COVID-19 Ever Recorded
  • Living Cement: The Microbes In Your Walls Could Power The Future
  • What Can Your Earwax Reveal About Your Health?
  • Ever Seen A Giraffe Use An Inhaler? Now You Can, And It’s Incredibly Wholesome
  • Martian Mudstone Has Features That Might Be Biosignatures, New Brain Implant Can Decode Your Internal Monologue, And Much More This Week
  • Crocodiles Weren’t All Blood-Thirsty Killers, Some Evolved To Be Plant-Eating Vegetarians
  • Stratospheric Warming Event May Be Unfolding In The Southern Polar Vortex, Shaking Up Global Weather Systems
  • 15 Years Ago, Bees In Brooklyn Appeared Red After Snacking Where They Shouldn’t
  • Carnian Pluvial Event: It Rained For 2 Million Years — And It Changed Planet Earth Forever
  • There’s Volcanic Unrest At The Campi Flegrei Caldera – Here’s What We Know
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version