The study has shown that changes to the surroundings can trigger a very fast form of evolution in species as they adopt traits to help them survive in the new conditions. Studying soil mites in a laboratory, a team of researchers was able to discover that the invertebrates’ age of maturity almost doubled in only around 20 generations. This is something that rational science suggests should not be possible and opens up the door for a change in prevailing scientific opinion. It had previously been assumed that evolutionary change can only occur over a much longer timescale.
There has been an implicit assumption which has always been, from Darwin onwards, that evolution works on long timescale and ecology works on short timescales. This thinking was based on the fact that if you squash a population or you change an environment then nothing will happen from an evolutionary point-of-view for generations.
The experiment used the soil mites was set up to help shed new light on whether the change in the size of harvested fish species, such as North Atlantic cod, was due to evolutionary change. The team sourced soil mites from four locations across the UK and housed them in 18 tests tubes in a laboratory.
The findings also showed that people who are involved in population management schemes, such as conserving endangered species, should take into account environmental factors.