• Question: can a species evolve in one lifetime?

    Asked by gate520sear on 18 Mar 2025.
    • Photo: Min Yap

      Min Yap answered on 18 Mar 2025:

      A species of bacteria can evolve at various speeds which depend on the environment it is in. If there are pressures that are influencing it, such as antibiotics, it can adapt to resist antibiotics over time.

    • Photo: Laura Durrant

      Laura Durrant answered on 20 Mar 2025:

      If we’re talking humans and animals, yes in a way! In my field, we’re interested in something called ‘epigenetics’ which is the regulation of DNA activity. In other words, epigenetics controls what parts of DNA are switched ‘on’ or ‘off’ at any given time. It’s is mostly influenced by environmental and lifestyle factors.

      A really cool example is identical twins – they share the exact same DNA, but if they live in different climates, eat different diets or do different forms of exercise, over time their characteristics will start to change and they won’t look so identical. So in that sense, epigenetics is a form of evolution within a single lifespan!

    • Photo: Pete Webb

      Pete Webb answered on 24 Mar 2025:

      Some fruit flies of the genus Drosophila have been known in lab experiments to evolve in only a few weeks.

Comments