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Although cancer rarely acts as an infectious disease, a recently emerged transmissible cancer in Tasmanian devils (Sarcophilus harrisii) is virtually 100% fatal. Devil facial tumour disease (DFTD) has swept across nearly the entire species' range, resulting in localized declines exceeding 90% and an overall species decline of more than 80% in less than 20 years.
Researchers have found that Tasmanian devils have developed some genetic resistance to the disease in just four to six generations.
Evolving resistance within so few generations is rare for vertebrates, says Beata Ujvari, an evolutionary ecologist at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, who was not invovled in the study. Australia's rabbit population quickly developed resistance to myxomatosis, a fatal viral infection. But it took 50–80 generations to do so.
The devil facial-tumour disease jumps from one Tasmanian devil to another when they bite each other during social interactions.
http://www.nature.com/news/tasmanian-devils-show-signs-of-resistance-to-devastating-facial-cancer-1.20508
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160830/ncomms12684/full/ncomms12684.html
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 03 2016, @04:27AM
While you are generally right if a gene isn't any or that much less beneficial than another gene then it may remain in the population. There are genes that are neither beneficial nor detrimental relative to other genes, otherwise natural selection would make everyone identical.
Some people may have brown hair, some people may have black hair. In most situations hair color may not matter much but if a situation does arise where it does matter hair color could be a factor.
Another example could be butterfly color. In many situations it doesn't matter, except for when it does (ie: how well you blend into the environment and evade predators). When it doesn't matter the population may retain various colors from when it did matter.
Some characteristics from hedge betting could have been past characteristics that were at one time used for survival but aren't necessarily detrimental when compared to another surviving gene.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 03 2016, @04:29AM
errr ... if a gene isn't any or that much less detrimental than another gene *