Natural history collections as windows on evolutionary processes.

Area of Science:

• Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
• Biodiversity Science
• Genomics

Background:

• Natural history collections are crucial archives of Earth's biodiversity.
• Traditionally used for biogeography, systematics, and conservation, their potential for direct evolution studies is increasingly recognized.
• They offer a unique resource for understanding evolutionary change in natural populations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To highlight the utility of natural history collections for studying direct evolutionary processes.
• To demonstrate how comparing historical and contemporary phenotypic and genotypic data reveals evolutionary dynamics.
• To showcase recent findings on rapid phenotypic evolution and its genetic underpinnings.

Main Methods:

• Analyzing phenotypic and genotypic data from natural history collections across different time points.
• Correlating observed evolutionary changes with environmental shifts to infer selective pressures.
• Investigating the genetic basis of observed phenotypic adaptations.

Main Results:

• Documented instances of significant phenotypic change in populations over short timescales.
• Linked evolutionary changes to specific environmental changes, providing context for selective forces.
• Identified the genetic basis for some phenotypic changes, offering multi-level insights into adaptation.

Conclusions:

• Natural history collections provide a powerful, time-series approach to studying evolution in natural populations.
• This methodology allows for the investigation of previously intractable evolutionary questions across diverse species and timescales.
• These collections offer an alternative to long-term field or lab experiments for observing evolution in action.