Originally, S. invicta was believed to be a red form of the black species S. saevissima richteri Forel. In 1972, Buren described the black imported fire ant to be a separate and distinct species, S. richteri Forel, and the RIFA was identified as S. invicta Buren (Hedges 1997).
Homologous recombination is a type of genetic recombination in which nucleotide (molecules which are joined make the structural units of RNA and DNA) sequences are exchanged between two similar or identical molecules of DNA.
Once the TALEN makes a cut and the right DNA sequence is added, a cell does the rest of the work. Cells already can and do fix mistakes in their DNA through a process called homologous recombination. Scientists are simply hijacking a system that is already in place and making it do what they want.