ATL Standard

Georgia Tech scientists have released a new review paper in Nature, highlighting how long-term studies have significantly advanced our understanding of evolution. These studies range from laboratory experiments to fieldwork on tropical islands, uncovering insights that shorter research efforts may miss.

James Stroud, the lead author and an Elizabeth Smithgall Watts Early Career Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech's School of Biological Sciences, emphasized the importance of observing evolution as it occurs. "Evolution isn't just about change over millions of years in fossils — it's happening all around us, right now," Stroud stated. He added that watching evolution unfold in real time requires long-term studies, which offer a direct view of evolutionary processes.

The paper titled “Long-term studies provide unique insights into evolution” is described as the first comprehensive analysis of such long-term evolutionary research. It reviews some of the longest-running experiments and field studies to date, including a 40-year study on Darwin’s finches in the Galápagos and a laboratory experiment involving 75,000 generations of bacteria. These projects documented significant evolutionary events like species formation through hybridization and new metabolic abilities.

“These remarkable evolutionary events were only caught because of the long-term nature of the research programs,” said Stroud. Co-author Will Ratcliff, Sutherland Professor at Georgia Tech and co-director of its Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Quantitative Biosciences program, noted that these unexpected discoveries are often serendipitous.

Ratcliff pointed out that despite advancements in scientific research methods, evolution proceeds at its own pace without technological shortcuts for observing adaptation across generations.

The review also addresses challenges faced by modern science, particularly the need for long-term research amidst an academic environment favoring quick results and short-term funding. However, multi-decadal efforts can yield profound biological insights.

Stroud and Ratcliff run their own long-term research programs at Georgia Tech. In South Florida, Stroud's 'Lizard Island' project documents evolutionary processes within a lizard population over ten years. Meanwhile, Ratcliff's Multicellularity Long Term Evolution Experiment (MuLTEE) focuses on snowflake yeast to explore transitions from single-celled to multicellular life forms.

Stroud stressed the importance of these studies given current environmental changes impacting Earth's biodiversity: “It has never been more important to understand how organisms adapt to changing environments over time.”

Through this review paper, Stroud and Ratcliff compile extensive data from ongoing evolutionary experiments to enhance understanding of life's past and future developments.

Funding for this work was provided by The US National Institutes of Health and the NSF Division of Environmental Biology.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08597-9