The new study challenges the long-held view of evolution as a completely random or chaotic process, suggesting instead that nature often works from pre-existing “blueprints” to solve survival challenges.
According to researchers at the University of York and the Wellcome Sanger Institute, the evolutionary process is not always unpredictable, in fact, it also depends on the same genetic “cheat sheet”.
The team revealed that distantly related butterflies and moths have used the same two genes, ivory and optics, to develop similar warning color patterns for more than 120 million years, a process known as mimicry.
By studying the species in South American rainforests, researchers found that evolution constantly flips the same genetic “switch” to produce toxic-looking wing patterns.
This discovery of convergent evolution suggests that biological adaptation may be more predictable than previously thought.
“Convergent evolution, where multiple unrelated species independently evolve the same trait, is common in the tree of life. But we rarely have the opportunity to investigate the genetic basis of this phenomenon,” said Professor Kanchon Dashmahapatra, from the Department of Biology at the University of York.
These findings were published in the journal PLOS Biology Suggests that evolution can be surprisingly predictable. And this prediction is nothing new, even though butterflies and moths “have been using these evolution-based genetic tricks to achieve similar color patterns since the age of dinosaurs.”
If evolution follows established pathways, scientists may eventually be able to predict how certain species will adapt to modern threats such as climate change or a changing environment.
