Another nice study of evolution in action. Steven Brady, a doctoral student in Yale's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, examined spotted salamanders living in roadside ponds contaminated by various types of runoff. He found that they had significantly higher mortality than their brethren living in more isolated woodland pools. But, after being toughened in their caustic roadside environments, the road warriors seemed to be superior competitors. Reciprocal transplant experiments showed that the roadside salamanders hatched significantly better than did woodland populations in roadside conditions, and did almost as well as the woodland groups did on their home turf.
We probably need to see more studies like this, as we move toward a world in which we won't differentiate habitats as disturbed and pristine, but rather by levels of perturbation.
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