In a blind fish that dwells in deep, dark Mexican caves,
scientists have found evidence for a long-debated mechanism of evolutionary
change that is distinct from natural selection of spontaneously arising
mutations, as reported this week in the journal Science.
The eyeless cavefish Astyanas mexicanus is “a special system
in which we can look at evolution in action,” says article co-author William
Jeffery, a senior adjunct scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL)
in Woods Hole, Mass., and a professor at the University of Maryland. The
Science study was led by Nicolas Rohner and Clifford J. Tabin at Harvard
Medical School’s Department of Genetics.