epigenetics can work on the scale of hours and 100s of genes, truly massive.

When the No. 2 cichlid saw that he was now No. 1, he responded quickly. He underwent massive surges in gene expression that immediately blinged up his pewter coloring with lurid red and blue streaks and, in a matter of hours, caused him to grow some 20%. It was as if Jason Schwartzman, coming to work 1 day to learn the big office stud had quit, morphed into Arnold Schwarzenegger by close of business.

Earth has fewer species than we think

More and more, biologists are discovering that organisms thought to be different species are, in fact, but 1. A recent example is that the formerly accepted 2 species of giant North American mammoths (the Columbian mammoth and the woolly mammoth) were genetically the same but the 2 had phenotypes determined by environment.

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