Behavior May Influence Evolution

eldavojohn writes "Pending your beliefs about evolution, National Geographic is running an interesting article on the influences of behavior on evolution. The study supports the controversial idea that an animal's behavior in response to environmental change can spur evolutionary adaptations. By adding a predator to an island where a species of lizards lived with no predators, they witnessed a quick shift in the average length of legs on the lizards. Long legs meant to escape were useless against the new larger predators while short legs became the dominant feature since they increased climbing ability (to trees the predators could not reach). For the finer details on the research, visit the Losos Lab Research Page."

Comments

Will we adapt?

[MECC]

The study also supports a somewhat controversial idea in biology: Animals' behavior in response to environmental change can spur evolutionary adaptations.

Could that imply that the behaviour of disbelieving scientific facts could spur a reduction in brain size in order to adapt to reduced intelligence?

And in other news...

[Daniel_Staal]

When the environment changes, some animals are better adapted to the new change than others. Details at 11.