Climate Change as a Stimulus for Evolution

The authors write that "one rigorous way to determine if evolution has occurred in a natural population is to collect propagules before and after an environmental change and raise them under common conditions," stating that "this approach was used previously to show that Brassica rapa [a self-incompatible weedy winter annual] evolved drought escape through earlier flowering following a series of recent dry years in Southern California, and that early flowering results in higher fitness under drought conditions (Franks et al., 2007)," while noting that "a related study showed that multiple phenological traits and their interactions evolved in response to the drought (Franks and Weis, 2008)." Read more.