The fate of evolving populations in changing environments depend on the specifics of the environment

What is it about?

The evolution of evolvability (aka, the ability to adapt) is often studied in changing environments - where it's the most crucial for populations to adapt continuously. However, the research usually focuses on one specific changing environment. Here, using a 105 different pairs of alternating environments, we found that the effect of environmental variability is highly environment dependent.

Featured Image

Photo by zero take on Unsplash

Photo by zero take on Unsplash

Why is it important?

It is important for us to understand how populations adapt to changing environments. Various species are facing new challenges due to climate change and bacteria are evolving resistance to our new antibiotics faster and faster. Our research shows that it might be hard to generalize the effect of environmental variability on an evolving population, and this needs to be taken into consideration when designing new studies or interpreting results.