Small fish species evolved rapidly following 1964 Alaska earthquake

Genomic technology has helped document rapid evolutionary transformation of threespine stickleback in less than 50 years

Evolution is usually thought of as occurring over long time periods, but it also can happen quickly. Consider a tiny fish whose transformation after the 1964 Alaskan earthquake was uncovered by University of Oregon scientists and their University of Alaska collaborators.

The fish, seawater-native threespine stickleback, in just decades experienced changes in both their genes and visible external traits such as eyes, shape, color, bone size and body armor when they adapted to survive in fresh water. The earthquake — 9.2 on the Richter scale and second highest ever recorded — caused geological uplift that captured marine fish in newly formed freshwater ponds on islands in Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska south of Anchorage.

The findings — detailed in a paper available online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences — are important for understanding the impacts of sudden environmental change on organisms in nature, says UO biologist William Cresko, whose lab led the National Science Foundation-funded research.

“We’ve now moved the timescale of the evolution of stickleback fish to decades, and it may even be sooner than that,” said Cresko, who also is the UO’s associate vice president for research and a member of the UO Institute of Ecology and Evolution. “In some of the populations that we studied we found evidence of changes in fewer than even 10 years. For the field, it indicates that evolutionary change can happen quickly, and this likely has been happening with other organisms as well.”

More at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/12/151214165724.htm

but hurry, things are changing quickly

The_observer said:

Small fish species evolved rapidly following 1964 Alaska earthquake

Genomic technology has helped document rapid evolutionary transformation of threespine stickleback in less than 50 years

Evolution is usually thought of as occurring over long time periods, but it also can happen quickly. Consider a tiny fish whose transformation after the 1964 Alaskan earthquake was uncovered by University of Oregon scientists and their University of Alaska collaborators.

The fish, seawater-native threespine stickleback, in just decades experienced changes in both their genes and visible external traits such as eyes, shape, color, bone size and body armor when they adapted to survive in fresh water. The earthquake — 9.2 on the Richter scale and second highest ever recorded — caused geological uplift that captured marine fish in newly formed freshwater ponds on islands in Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska south of Anchorage.

The findings — detailed in a paper available online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences — are important for understanding the impacts of sudden environmental change on organisms in nature, says UO biologist William Cresko, whose lab led the National Science Foundation-funded research.

“We’ve now moved the timescale of the evolution of stickleback fish to decades, and it may even be sooner than that,” said Cresko, who also is the UO’s associate vice president for research and a member of the UO Institute of Ecology and Evolution. “In some of the populations that we studied we found evidence of changes in fewer than even 10 years. For the field, it indicates that evolutionary change can happen quickly, and this likely has been happening with other organisms as well.”

More at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/12/151214165724.htm

but hurry, things are changing quickly

Fruit flies are much faster again. It is helped by the relatively short lives of individuals and their fast reproductive rate. We have evolved too, but over hundreds of thousands of years, largely because we are a long lived species with a slow rate of reproduction.

The main key for rapid evolutionary development is environmental change, which basically means, you either adapt to the changes or you die out.

The_observer said:

Small fish species evolved rapidly following 1964 Alaska earthquake

Genomic technology has helped document rapid evolutionary transformation of threespine stickleback in less …

That’s so startling it’s hard to believe. Could it just be selection without mutation. Because successful new mutations occur very much more slowly that. Selecton can be much faster.

PermeateFree said:

Fruit flies are much faster again. It is helped by the relatively short lives of individuals and their fast reproductive rate. We have evolved too, but over hundreds of thousands of years, largely because we are a long lived species with a slow rate of reproduction.

The main key for rapid evolutionary development is environmental change, which basically means, you either adapt to the changes or you die out.

Fruit flies don’t count because there the mutations are artificially created by deliberate exposure to ionising radiation. Nothing to do with environmental change.

mollwollfumble said:

The_observer said:

Small fish species evolved rapidly following 1964 Alaska earthquake

Genomic technology has helped document rapid evolutionary transformation of threespine stickleback in less …

That’s so startling it’s hard to believe. Could it just be selection without mutation. Because successful new mutations occur very much more slowly that. Selecton can be much faster.

PermeateFree said:

Fruit flies are much faster again. It is helped by the relatively short lives of individuals and their fast reproductive rate. We have evolved too, but over hundreds of thousands of years, largely because we are a long lived species with a slow rate of reproduction.

The main key for rapid evolutionary development is environmental change, which basically means, you either adapt to the changes or you die out.

Fruit flies don’t count because there the mutations are artificially created by deliberate exposure to ionising radiation. Nothing to do with environmental change.

I think you might find the fruit fly is used for many genetic studies.

D. melanogaster is one of the most studied organisms in biological research, particularly in genetics and developmental biology. The several reasons include:

Its care and culture requires little equipment and uses little space even when using large cultures, and the overall cost is low. It is small and easy to grow in the laboratory and its morphology is easy to identify once anesthetized (usually with ether, carbon dioxide gas, by cooling, or with products like FlyNap). It has a short generation time (about 10 days at room temperature), so several generations can be studied within a few weeks. It has a high fecundity (females lay up to 100 eggs per day, and perhaps 2000 in a lifetime). Males and females are readily distinguished and virgin females are easily isolated, facilitating genetic crossing. The mature larvae show giant chromosomes in the salivary glands called polytene chromosomes—“puffs” indicate regions of transcription and hence gene activity. It has only four pairs of chromosomes: three autosomes, and one sex chromosome. Males do not show meiotic recombination, facilitating genetic studies. Recessive lethal “balancer chromosomes” carrying visible genetic markers can be used to keep stocks of lethal alleles in a heterozygous state without recombination due to multiple inversions in the balancer. Genetic transformation techniques have been available since 1987. Its complete genome was sequenced and first published in 2000.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drosophila_melanogaster

PermeateFree said:

mollwollfumble said:

The_observer said:

Small fish species evolved rapidly following 1964 Alaska earthquake

Genomic technology has helped document rapid evolutionary transformation of threespine stickleback in less …

That’s so startling it’s hard to believe. Could it just be selection without mutation. Because successful new mutations occur very much more slowly that. Selecton can be much faster.

PermeateFree said:

Fruit flies are much faster again. It is helped by the relatively short lives of individuals and their fast reproductive rate. We have evolved too, but over hundreds of thousands of years, largely because we are a long lived species with a slow rate of reproduction.

The main key for rapid evolutionary development is environmental change, which basically means, you either adapt to the changes or you die out.

Fruit flies don’t count because there the mutations are artificially created by deliberate exposure to ionising radiation. Nothing to do with environmental change.

I think you might find the fruit fly is used for many genetic studies.

D. melanogaster is one of the most studied organisms in biological research, particularly in genetics and developmental biology. The several reasons include:

Its care and culture requires little equipment and uses little space even when using large cultures, and the overall cost is low. It is small and easy to grow in the laboratory and its morphology is easy to identify once anesthetized (usually with ether, carbon dioxide gas, by cooling, or with products like FlyNap). It has a short generation time (about 10 days at room temperature), so several generations can be studied within a few weeks. It has a high fecundity (females lay up to 100 eggs per day, and perhaps 2000 in a lifetime). Males and females are readily distinguished and virgin females are easily isolated, facilitating genetic crossing. The mature larvae show giant chromosomes in the salivary glands called polytene chromosomes—“puffs” indicate regions of transcription and hence gene activity. It has only four pairs of chromosomes: three autosomes, and one sex chromosome. Males do not show meiotic recombination, facilitating genetic studies. Recessive lethal “balancer chromosomes” carrying visible genetic markers can be used to keep stocks of lethal alleles in a heterozygous state without recombination due to multiple inversions in the balancer. Genetic transformation techniques have been available since 1987. Its complete genome was sequenced and first published in 2000.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drosophila_melanogaster

Would bacteria and viruses be the fastest to evolve?

PermeateFree said:

mollwollfumble said:

The_observer said:

Small fish species evolved rapidly following 1964 Alaska earthquake

Genomic technology has helped document rapid evolutionary transformation of threespine stickleback in less …

That’s so startling it’s hard to believe. Could it just be selection without mutation. Because successful new mutations occur very much more slowly that. Selecton can be much faster.

PermeateFree said:

Fruit flies are much faster again. It is helped by the relatively short lives of individuals and their fast reproductive rate. We have evolved too, but over hundreds of thousands of years, largely because we are a long lived species with a slow rate of reproduction.

The main key for rapid evolutionary development is environmental change, which basically means, you either adapt to the changes or you die out.

Fruit flies don’t count because there the mutations are artificially created by deliberate exposure to ionising radiation. Nothing to do with environmental change.

I think you might find the fruit fly is used for many genetic studies.

D. melanogaster is one of the most studied organisms in biological research, particularly in genetics and developmental biology. The several reasons include:

Its care and culture requires little equipment and uses little space even when using large cultures, and the overall cost is low. It is small and easy to grow in the laboratory and its morphology is easy to identify once anesthetized (usually with ether, carbon dioxide gas, by cooling, or with products like FlyNap). It has a short generation time (about 10 days at room temperature), so several generations can be studied within a few weeks. It has a high fecundity (females lay up to 100 eggs per day, and perhaps 2000 in a lifetime). Males and females are readily distinguished and virgin females are easily isolated, facilitating genetic crossing. The mature larvae show giant chromosomes in the salivary glands called polytene chromosomes—“puffs” indicate regions of transcription and hence gene activity. It has only four pairs of chromosomes: three autosomes, and one sex chromosome. Males do not show meiotic recombination, facilitating genetic studies. Recessive lethal “balancer chromosomes” carrying visible genetic markers can be used to keep stocks of lethal alleles in a heterozygous state without recombination due to multiple inversions in the balancer. Genetic transformation techniques have been available since 1987. Its complete genome was sequenced and first published in 2000.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drosophila_melanogaster

Would bacteria and viruses be the fastest to evolve?

bob(from black rock) said:

PermeateFree said:

mollwollfumble said:

Fruit flies don’t count because there the mutations are artificially created by deliberate exposure to ionising radiation. Nothing to do with environmental change.

I think you might find the fruit fly is used for many genetic studies.

D. melanogaster is one of the most studied organisms in biological research, particularly in genetics and developmental biology. The several reasons include:

Its care and culture requires little equipment and uses little space even when using large cultures, and the overall cost is low. It is small and easy to grow in the laboratory and its morphology is easy to identify once anesthetized (usually with ether, carbon dioxide gas, by cooling, or with products like FlyNap). It has a short generation time (about 10 days at room temperature), so several generations can be studied within a few weeks. It has a high fecundity (females lay up to 100 eggs per day, and perhaps 2000 in a lifetime). Males and females are readily distinguished and virgin females are easily isolated, facilitating genetic crossing. The mature larvae show giant chromosomes in the salivary glands called polytene chromosomes—“puffs” indicate regions of transcription and hence gene activity. It has only four pairs of chromosomes: three autosomes, and one sex chromosome. Males do not show meiotic recombination, facilitating genetic studies. Recessive lethal “balancer chromosomes” carrying visible genetic markers can be used to keep stocks of lethal alleles in a heterozygous state without recombination due to multiple inversions in the balancer. Genetic transformation techniques have been available since 1987. Its complete genome was sequenced and first published in 2000.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drosophila_melanogaster

Would bacteria and viruses be the fastest to evolve?

If organisms can get everything they need from their environment, then there is no need to change, also as these organisms are asexual they tend to reproduce by division and so are clones of each other, therefore less likely to mutate. However they would also be less adaptable, which means dramatic habitat change is likely to wipe them all out, but as they are so numerous and widespread, suitable habitat will usually persist somewhere, making extinction unlikely.

bob(from black rock) said:

Would bacteria and viruses be the fastest to evolve?

I can’t say about viruses, but different strains of bacteria exhibit both extremely slow and extremely fast (for definitions of extremely fast involving hundreds of millions of years) chemical evolution. Most bacteria exhibit extremely slow chemical evolution, the chemical evolution of archaea is even slower. Perhaps I can put it this way, about 1% of bacteria have been observed to evolve chemically 5 to 10 times as fast as the average animal, many evolve chemically at roughly the same speed as the average animal, and about a quarter of bacteria and most archaea evolved chemically 5 to 10 times as slow as the average animal.