All told, the little water bears have about 6,000 genes that come from outside sources, mainly bacteria. Plants, fungi, and Archaea also made appearances in the tardigrade genome.
Unless bacteria, plants, fungi and tardigrade are all the " same kinds of species" then this would appear to be something new mixing animal, plant, bacteria and fungi. Archaea are already a strange lot and are themselves extremophiles.
Who cares?
Just look at it walking along the plant on its adorable little feetsies!
LOOK AT IT!!!
;D
the issue it seems is whether they receive the info from actual HGT or from an invasion of virus with bacterial DNA present- it seems they might be able to receive bacterial DNA via HGT- however, another question is whether the info they receive is actually parasitic in nature, or needed for survival as happens between similar kinds (IE bacteria share DNA for the sole purpose of survival- whereas almost every other creature when they receive foreign dna the dna is not for survival but rather is invasive, causes loss of information or causes problems or simply is ‘junk dna’
Viral DNA invades hosts by turning from Mrna to DNA after it’s received into a cell- this is more an invasion than a lateral transfer whereas bacterial transfer to another bacteria shares it’s DNA in a manner that is taken up by the host for the purpose of survival
Now- I’m just guessing at most of this- I have no edumacation in this field- just thinking through logically- Viruses invade, usually, and wreak havoc, or force their host to adapt, but the DNA info remains the virus’ DNA info separate from host as it serves no real purpose other than the survival of the invaded Virus