White Lizards Evolve in New Mexico Dunes

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Key Ideas:

• Erica Bree Rosenblum's focus is on three lizard species that elsewhere are dark skinned but in White Sands have each evolved a white-skinned variety that makes them hard to find.
• In at least two of the lizard species, the researchers found that mutations on the same gene, linked to the production of skin pigment, were responsible.
• In the two of the lizard species, mutations on the same gene, linked to the production of skin pigment, were responsible.
• In the two species, there are two molecular mechanisms. In one, the mutation has made the white-skinned trait dominant; in the other, the mutation has made it recessive.

Reflection:

I think that this article wasn't uninteresting, but it wasn't interesting either. I find it pretty amazing that this lizard could drastically change colors like that. I don't think a human could go through a change like that. If that happened, all humans would constantly be changing skin colors depending on where they live. That would be quite weird. There is an allele interaction that causes the lizards skin color to change - dominant/recessive. The skin pigment is an evolutionary trait that is a part of survival of the fittest. This course helped me to understand this topic because we studied evolution.

MLA:Fountain, Henry. "White Lizards Evolve in New Mexico Dunes." The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. 4 Jan. 2010. Web. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/science/05oblizard.html.