Evolution is a potent force that needs to be reckoned with in the short term, according the results of a study led

by University of Leeds researchers, alongside colleagues from the University of Aberdeen. The research, which was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), focused on soil mites as a model organism, but the authors believe the findings to be widely applicable and of particular relevance for disease and pest control, population management and conservation programmes. Reported in the journal Ecology Letters yesterday, this study is the first to confirm a link between rapid genetic evolution and population dynamics in an experimental setting, and reinforces previous indications of the connection between short-term changes in physical characteristics and evolution. In an interview with ScienceOmega.com, Tim Benton, Professor of Population Ecology in the Faculty of Biological Sciences at the University of Leeds, commented on the intertwining of ecology and evolution that is demonstrated in the paper. He began by explaining that the perception of evolution as a very slow and gradual process stretches back to Darwin and even pre-Darwinian times. "Looking at the characteristics of species over time, as in the fossil record, any changes in diversity will of course take hundreds of thousands or millions of years to work through," Professor Benton said. "Coupled with Darwins argument about natural selection giving rise to adaptations such as the eye, this makes it difficult to imagine such changes arising over anything other than many thousands of generations. Its because of this expectation that people have tended not to look for genetic evolution over shorter periods." Along with lead author Dr Tom Cameron, previously a postdoctoral fellow at Leeds and now based at Ume University in Sweden, Professor Benton and the team collected soil mites from the wild and raised them in glass tubes. From six of the 18 tubes, 40 per cent of adult mites were removed each week. In six other tubes the same proportion of juvenile mites were also removed, and in the remaining tubes no harvesting was undertaken. Although there many studies have been conducted in the wild that have pointed towards evolution as a consequence of environmental change, these have very rarely been able to look at the combination of all three elements considered here; genetics, biology, and population dynamics. "We chose the soil mite because it is a small but nonetheless representative animal in that it grows up and lays eggs in the same way a bird or a fish would," explained Professor Benton. "As it reproduces relatively quickly, we were able to carry out proper experiments in a laboratory setting and follow the population dynamics of the soil mite and the way its life history and genetics changed, according to the changes we brought about in its environment." In just 15 generations, the researchers observed a doubling in the age at which the soil mites matured as they adapted to the conditions of captivity. In

the tubes from which adults harvested, individuals remained as juveniles for even longer due to the higher likelihood of dying as they reached maturity. The competitive environment of the glass tubes favoured those mites that grew more slowly and were more fertile when mature. "When we put the animals into the test tubes, at first they seemed to be evolving towards extinction because it was a foreign environment which they didnt like and werent well-suited to," related Professor Benton. "Due to the evolutionary changes that occurred, they recovered, and thats one of the positive messages to come out of this study." That positive message is that evolution may help animals cope with environmental change, but Professor Benton was quick to caution that the impact could also be negative depending on how change is managed. Despite its relatively small scale, the study has its roots in finding the answers to other, perhaps more familiar, problems. There is mounting evidence that fish are evolving in response to harvesting and over-fishing around the world, as the professor explained. Read more: http://www.scienceomega.com/article/1029/evolution-is-a-gamechanger-in-the-short-term#ixzz2QHbXUuDg