CANBERRA, May 27 (Xinhua) -- The raw material that drives evolution is more abundant in wild animals than previously thought, an Australian-led research has found.
In a study published on Thursday, 40 researchers from 27 institutions systematically evaluated the speed of evolution among 19 populations of wild animals, including superb fairywrens in Australia, Scottish red deer and spotted hyenas in Tanzania.
Darwinian evolution is the process by which small genetic differences cause inherited variations such as an improved ability to survive and reproduce, driving evolution through natural selection.
Timothee Bonnet, lead author of the study from the Research School of Biology at the Australian National University (ANU), said researchers sought to discover how common the genetic differences -- the "fuel of evolution" -- were among wild animals.
After spending three years trawling through data, they found the differences to be two to four times more abundant than previously thought.
"We needed to know when each individual was born, who they mated with, how many offspring they had, and when they died. Each of these studies ran for an average of 30 years, providing the team with an incredible 2.6 million hours of field data," Bonnet said in a statement.
"We combined this with genetic information on each animal studied to estimate the extent of genetic differences in their ability to reproduce, in each population," he said.
"The method gives us a way to measure the potential speed of current evolution in response to natural selection across all traits in a population. This is something we have not been able to do with previous methods, so being able to see so much potential change came as a surprise to the team," Bonnet said.
According to researchers, the findings mean species could adapt to environmental change faster than previously thought.
However with the rate of global warming increasing, Bonnet said there was no guarantee animals would be able to keep up.
"But what we can say is that evolution is a much more significant driver than we previously thought in the adaptability of populations to current environmental changes," he said. ■