What are some examples of viruses influencing evolution in animals?
OK first of all the endosymbiotic theory states that current mitochondria are the ancestors of a BACTERIUM that infected a single celled prokaryote many years ago, not a virus! Bacteria and Viruses are incredibly different! Anyways, when it comes to viruses and evolution I like to use the Australian myxomatosis case as an example since I think it was rather quite interesting, let me give you a brief run through. So back in the mid 19th century, rabbits were introduced to Australia because hunters were bored and wanted to shoot them. Well turns out the rabbits bred like…well…rabbits, and before you knew it the population was out of hand and destroying many crops. So scientists came up with the elegant yet badass idea to introduce a deadly virus to the rabbits known as myxoma virus. This recently discovered virus was harmless to humans but deadly to the rabbits. So what happened? The rabbits started dropping like flies as the virus killed off nearly 99% of the rabbit population! But
