Research finds evolutionary ‘secret sauce’ against climate change
Research suggests hares and jackrabbits hopping along in the Rocky Mountains demonstrate the “secret sauce” for how animals can adapt to a new climate.
Scott Mills, lead author of a paper published Thursday in Science, says lessons from mixed populations of brown and white bunnies can be applied widely to help species adjust as the environment changes around them.
“We call it polymorphism, but I also call it the secret sauce for rapid evolution,” said Mills, a biologist at the University of Montana. “The more variation that’s available for natural selection to act on, the faster it can act.”
Mills and his colleagues were interested in examining the consequences of climate change using animals’ coat colour. There are 21 species that change colour from winter to summer and Mills’s paper looks at eight of them, including hares, jackrabbits, Arctic foxes and weasels.