A common songbird may have acquired genes from fellow migrating birds in order to travel greater distances, according to a University of British Columbia study published this week in the journal Evolution.
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Evolutionary biologists have long been puzzled by research that indicates some Audubon’s warblers share the same mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) with myrtle warblers — a different species of songbird that migrates annually to the southeastern U.S., Central America and the Caribbean — even though they look dramatically different.
If so, genetics is not what we thought. Which sheds an askew light on what kids should be taught in school. How much do we really know that we want passed on as orthodoxy?