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The most persistent pest for alfalfa growers has been the pea aphid, a green creature with long legs and antennae.

Cats always land on their feet, the old saying goes, but felines have nothing on the pea aphid.

Nancy A. Moran, a researcher at Yale who is soon to be at the University of Arizona, and Tyler Jarvik, an Arizona colleague, report in Science that the pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum, produces carotenoids using a genetic sequence that it picked up from fungi as it evolved, a process called lateral gene transfer.

Dr. Moran, who studies genomic evolution, made the discovery while searching through the pea aphid genome, which was sequenced last year.

Carrots Share Trait With Tiny Pea Aphid There’s a reason your parents kept after you to eat your carrots.