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After examining DNA from 35 species of walking sticks, evolutionary biologist Michael Whiting and his colleagues at Brigham Young University in Utah found that wings had been lost in some of the primitive insects and then re-evolved at least four times over tens of millions of years.
“Traditional thought for the last two centuries has been that wings had only evolved once in evolution, but our study demonstrates that in walking stick insects, wings were re-evolved on multiple occasions,” Whiting said in an interview.
The research, reported in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature, challenges basic beliefs of evolution — that wings evolved only once in insects and that if a trait is lost it cannot be regained.
He likened his observation to a mammalogist discovering a whale walking around on legs. “It really is quite a remarkable and revolutionary idea,” he added. |
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