Predicting evolution: The dramatic transformation of a snail in less than three decades
Date
Friday, February 7, 2025 16:00 - 17:00
Speaker
Diego Fernando Garcia Castillo (ISTA)
Location
Raiffeisen Lecture Hall, Central Building
Series
Think & Drink
Tags
Think and drink
Contact
In this talk, I will present how we assessed the predictability aspect of evolution in a 30-year transplant experiment in the marine snail Littorina saxatilis. In 1992, we collected ~700 individuals from a crab-predation dominated environment and relocated them to an uninhabited, crab-free islet exposed to strong waves. Three decades later, the introduced population has established itself, exhibiting significant morphological and genetic changes that deviate from the parental Crab ecotype and resemble the Wave ecotype. The observed evolutionary trajectory aligns with predictions we formulated based on knowledge of spatial variation among snail populations.