First Comes Global Warming, Then An Evolutionary Explosion

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2178

03 Aug 2009: Report

First Comes Global Warming,
Then An Evolutionary Explosion

In a matter of years or decades, researchers believe, animals and plants already are adapting to life in a warmer world. Some species will be unable to change quickly enough and will go extinct, but others will evolve, as natural selection enables them to carry on in an altered environment.

by carl zimmer

In 1997, Arthur Weis found himself with an extra bucket of seeds. Weis, who was teaching at the University of California at Irvine at the time, had dispatched a student, Sheina Sim, to gather some field mustard seeds for a study. When Sim was done with her research, Weis was left with a lot of leftover seeds. For no particular reason, he decided not to throw the bucket out. “We just tossed it in a cold, dry incubator,” said Weis.

Weis is glad they did. When a severe drought struck southern California, Weis realized that he could use the extra bucket of seeds for an experiment. In 2004 he and his colleagues collected more field mustard seeds from the same sites that Sim had visited seven years earlier. They thawed out some of the 1997 seeds and then reared both sets of plants under identical conditions. The newer plants grew to smaller sizes, produced fewer flowers, and, most dramatically, produced those flowers eight days earlier in the spring. The changing climate had, in other words, driven the field mustard plants to evolve over just a few years. “It was serendipity that we had the seeds lying around,” says Weis.

Weis is convinced that his experiment is just a harbinger of things to come. Global warming is projected to drastically raise the average global temperature, as well as producing many other changes to the world’s climate, such as more droughts in California. And in response, Weis and other researchers contend, life will undergo an evolutionary explosion.

“Darwin thought evolution was gradual, and that it would take longer than the lifetime of a scientist to observe even the slightest change,” says Weis, who is now at the University of Toronto. “That might be the average case, but evolution can also be very rapid under the right conditions. Climate change is going to be one of those things where the conditions are met.”

…

[WillParkinson]

1. What BS! There is no climate change. There is no evolution.

Sorry, just had to get that out of the way. :-)

Wonder what people will say if it does occur? God willed it? They were always like that?

[Auggie]

2. Provided there are people around to say it...

[ensho]

3. kick

nt

[Gregorian]

4. I had this conversation with my friends, as a child. Back in the early 70's.

So why is it that I had to sit here for forty years, steaming angry about nobody paying attention? I watched as all kinds of bullshit happened. But nothing! And still nothing. And I predict that nothing meaningful will happen. This is just going to run it's course, and population will slow down only because people subconsciously are sick of traffic jams, and having children is too costly. Well, aside from the East. They're full throttle. But we're past peak oil, so they will be forced to slow down as well. In 200 years the planet will have no ice caps to speak of, life will be significantly less diverse, and there will be a smaller population living a less luxurious lifestyle. And a whole lot less noise. No jets.

I don't know why I even care. It only hurts me. Kind of like wishing Bush hadn't killed a million Iraqis. It's the same feeling. Watching destruction.

[Auggie]

5. It's ironic we're the first inhabitants of earth to be aware of our own

possible extinction but not doing anything to prevent it. Does that make us one of the most screwed-up species ever?

[OKIsItJustMe]

7. It's hard to say whether life will be less diverse in 200 years or more…

If (as it appears) evolution is capable of much more rapid adaptation than we generally believe, given the amount the environment may change in those 200 years, we may have more diversity!

Just look at what happened during the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eocene">Eocene!

[glitch]

6. The insects will be fine. nt

[XemaSab]

8. Anyone interested in this should check out "Beak of the Finch"

It's a terrific book about research into evolution on the Galapagos.

It's not just plants that can show fairly rapid change in a few short years.

[OKIsItJustMe]

9. See also this thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=203433&mesg_id=203433

[eppur_se_muova]

10. So, evolution is one of those things that's "faster than expected"?

It seems the only thing left that's slow to change is people's imaginations. Just because they can't imagine things happening differently from their expectations, they assume it's a law of Nature. This idea that evolution acts only over very long periods of time should be dead and buried by now. It should be obvious that the rate of evolutionary change depends on the lifetimes and reproductive strategies of indivual organisms, as well as on the nature of the trait(s) evolving.

[Gregorian]

11. Here's the link to that video. Interesting, as I was dead set that it only worked fast in one direc.

I was all prepared to argue that evolution is like building a house or burning a house. But I must be wrong.

Thanks, I'll watch this.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2502482678246657823&ei=xn93SpvPAYHKqgO26oD3Cg&q=Beak+of+the+Finch&hl=en&client=firefox-a