"He must, so know the starfish and the student biologist who sits at the feet of living things, proliferate in all
directions. Having certain tendencies, he must move along their lines to the limit of their potentialities."

John Steinbeck - Log from the Sea of Cortez

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Evolving viruses

Work from researchers at the University of Liverpool appears in Nature and is described at Science Daily. They found that evolved responses in the bacteria led to faster evolution in the viruses.

I'm not sure that I agree with the premise that the study provides "the first experimental evidence that shows that evolution is driven most powerfully by interactions between species, rather than adaptation to the environment." There's abudant evidence that this is often the case - David Reznick's guppy studies in Trinidad come to mind. I do think that this contributes to an ongoing paradigm shift that recognizes the importance of interspecific interactions as a driving force in evolution. It's foolish to overgeneralize, however. The relative significance of environmental versus biotic factors depends on the particular system being examined. You'll have a hard time convincing me that biotic factors are more influential than physical ones in acidic hydrothermal pools or on polar icecaps.

No comments:

Post a Comment