Climate Adaptation

Rising temperatures and seas, massive droughts, changing landscapes. Successfully adapting to climate change is growing increasingly important. For humans, this means using our technological advancement to find solutions, like smarter cities and better water management. But for some plants and animals, adapting to these global changes involves the most ancient solution of all: evolution. Evolutionary adaptation usually occurs along time scales of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years. But in cases where species are under especially strong selective conditions, like those caused by rapidly changing climates, adaptive evolution can happen more quickly. In recent decades, we've seen many plants, animals, and insects relocating themselves and undergoing changes to their body sizes, and the dates they flower or breed. But many of these are plastic, or nonheritable changes to an individual's physical traits. And there are limits to how much an organism can change its own physiology to meet environmental requirements. That's why scientists are seeking examples of evolutionary changes coded in species' DNA that are heritable, long-lasting, and may provide a key to their future.