Re: [asa] Climate change & evolutio

> I was just wondering what work has been done, if any,
> to formulate and/or test hypotheses/predictions
> regarding the mechanisms of evolution in the context
> of current and future climate change? Seems to me like
> an interesting topic to explore...

There are several lines of approach to this. One is examining
patterns of response to warming events in the geologic past. Another
is to experimentally subject organisms or groups of organisms to
altered temperature conditions and see what happens. Yet another is
to observe the changes already taking place and extrapolate from
there.

The randomness of evolution comes into play, however-we can't predict
that a particular mutation will happen, only a probability of its
happening, as well as the complexity of both individual organisms and
ecosystems, so predicting exactly what will happen (as opposed to
general patterns) will be difficult.

Also, the response time is likely to be slow (part of the reason why
the rate of current climate change, rather than the magnitude, is the
real problem). My family's unpublished data on the Plio-Pleistocene
mollusks of the western Atlantic indicates that recovery from an
extinction event takes at least a few million years, and many mollusks
have shorter generation times and thus faster responses than many
vertebrates.

-- 
Dr. David Campbell
425 Scientific Collections
University of Alabama
"I think of my happy condition, surrounded by acres of clams"
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