Archive for March 2009
Scientists witness evolution!
Observing the mechanisms of evolution in order to understand how a species adapts to another under different ecological conditions was the goal of researchers at the Laboratoire Écologie et Évolution at CNRS, Université Pierre et Marie Curie and the École Normale Supérieure. They studied two bacteria — a predator and a prey — over 300 generations in a controlled environment.
So, it seems we’re one step closer to proving the theory of evolution (without having to wait millions of years!). Essentially, they put some bugs in a container and let them duke it out. The predator bugs ate the wussy bugs for a while, but then, the wussy bugs developed a resistance to the predators and in some cases even ate them right back.
It is slightly more complex than my summary above, involving many generations of bacteria all made genetically identical and a few months study and several transfers from one bottle to another to simulate things like hurricanes or floods causing a species to be spread about a bit. But it does lend weight to the theory of evolution. In the 150 years since Darwin wrote “Evolution of the Species”, there’s never been any real, solid proof, this takes us one experiment closer to proving the I am a monkeys uncle.
