Wild Things:
Life as We Know It
Honeyeater birds, sea slugs, tree frogs, and more
- By T.A. Frail, Megan Gambino, Laura Helmuth, Abigail Tucker and Sarah Zielinski
- Smithsonian magazine, February 2009
(Clay Irving / Flickr)
Hey, Cinderella, pumpkins really do travel well. A new genetic analysis of 147 species of the gourd family (Cucurbitaceae) by the University of Munich suggests that gourds originated in Asia and floated across oceans to other continents. In the past 60 million years, gourds reached and took root in South America, Australia and Africa multiple times and colonized Madagascar—home to a cornucopia of gourd species today—on 13 separate occasions.
Additional Sources
"Gourds afloat: a dated phylogeny reveals an Asian origin of the gourd family (Cucurbitaceae) and numerous oversea dispersal events," Hanno Schaefer et al., Proceedings of the Royal Society B, November 25, 2008
"Spectacular New Gliding Species of Ecnomiohyla (Anura: Hylidae) from Central Panama," Joseph R. Mendelson III et al., Journal of Herpetology, December 2008
"Cross-modal individual recognition in domestic horses (Equus caballus)," Leanne Proops et al., PNAS, December 15, 2008
"Convergent Evolution of Hawaiian and Australo-Pacific Honeyeaters from Distant Songbird Ancestors," Robert C. Fleischer et al., Current Biology, December 11, 2008
"Horizontal gene transfer of the algal nuclear gene psbO to the photosynthetic sea slug Elysia chlorotica," Mary E. Rumpho et al., PNAS, November 18, 2008
Comments (2)
Very Very good artical!I found it very helpful. I had to read it over and over again! It was very interesting. I printed it out and showed all my friends! They thought it was very interesting too!
Posted by christine on February 17,2009 | 05:24 PM
Please tell me if it was your publication that presented a story on gourds within the last 3-4 months. I think the title was something like_____________gourd capital of the world. Thank you
Posted by Margaret Wellman on February 13,2009 | 03:04 PM
This was very helpful to me...
Posted by Kykeshia on February 9,2009 | 01:13 PM