Such sex 'distorters' have been discovered - and studied in great depth - in laboratory animals such as mice and flies, in which their effects can be detected through selective breeding. 'If you look, more often than not, you find them,' says Nitin Phadnis, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, who co-led the study.
According a March 2025 study led by USF professor Simon Scarpetta, it's possible that a group of iguanas - which may have hailed from arid regions like Southern California and Northern Mexico - hitched a ride on vegetation rafts all the way to Fiji millions of years ago, explaining their genetic presence on a far-flung archipelago over 8,000 kilometers away.