Amazing 30-Year Experiment Shows Evolution Unfolding in Slow Motion

 

The Institute of Science and Technology Austria carried out a 30-year evolution experiment that demonstrated how sea snails evolved in real time. 

This study transplanted a snail population to an island habitat that had lost its native snails due to an algae bloom in an effort to better understand how species adapt.

 The young snails gradually became more and more like the original population, providing special insights on adaptation and natural selection. This experiment demonstrates how evolution can occur in quantifiable, visible stages.

The Long-Term Evolution Experiment (LTEE), a seminal study conducted in 1988 by evolutionary researcher Richard Lenski, examined 12 populations of E. coli bacterium. 

The experiment has demonstrated how natural selection and random mutations influence evolution over time, spanning over 70,000 bacterial generations. 

One noteworthy discovery showed how sophisticated evolutionary innovations might arise through cumulative mutations and "potentiating events": one population of E. coli gained the ability to digest citrate, a food that was previously inaccessible. The gradual and contingent processes of evolution are viewed in detail in this study.