"Humans and domestic animals, for example, have varied skin, fur and hair, as well as a range of heights – an example of continuous variation," says Utah State University genetic ecologist Zach Gompert. "In the wild, however, types of genetic mutations affecting adaptation and thus, appearance, are only beginning to be understood. Some traits show more discontinuous or discrete variation."

In a paper published July 23, 2020 in Science, Gompert and colleagues from the University of Sheffield, United Kingdom; France's Paul Valéry University of Montpellier; the University of Bern and the Swiss Federal Institute for Aquatic Science and Technology, Switzerland; México's Campus Juriquilla of the Autonomous University of Querétaro, University of Notre Dame and the University of Nevada-Reno, discuss findings from an investigation of seven species of North American stick insects (Timema).

Read on: https://phys.org/news/2020-07-genome-mapping-reveals-supermutation-resulting-cryptic.html