Is there a native jQuery function to switch elements?

Here's an interesting way to solve this using only jQuery (if the 2 elements are next to each other):

$("#element1").before($("#element2"));

or

$("#element1").after($("#element2"));

Paulo's right, but I'm not sure why he's cloning the elements concerned. This isn't really necessary and will lose any references or event listeners associated with the elements and their descendants.

Here's a non-cloning version using plain DOM methods (since jQuery doesn't really have any special functions to make this particular operation easier):

function swapNodes(a, b) {
    var aparent = a.parentNode;
    var asibling = a.nextSibling === b ? a : a.nextSibling;
    b.parentNode.insertBefore(a, b);
    aparent.insertBefore(b, asibling);
}