This paper is a detailed examination of the development of feather pigmentation. Very interesting stuff. The only problem is that lots of information is stuffed into a tiny Science paper. I wish they published it in a long-format journal…
Month: June 2013
Beatriz Vicoso and Doris Bachtrog have a very interesting paper showing that the Drosophila 4th (dot) chromosome is homologous to the sex chromosome of more basally branching Diptera. It seems that, early in Drosophilid evolution, Muller-A took over the role of the sex chromosome from Muller-F. They also have an interesting discussion of how such takeovers could occur.