Evolution Can Occur Quickly

"In a stunning example of evolution at work, scientists have now found that changes in a single gene can produce major changes in the skeletal armor of fish living in the wild.

The surprising results, announced in the March 25, 2005, issue of journal Science, bring new data to long-standing debates about how evolution occurs in natural habitats.

'Our motivation is to try to understand how new animal types evolve in nature,' said molecular geneticist David M. Kingsley, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the Stanford University School of Medicine. 'People have been interested in whether a few genes are involved, or whether changes in many different genes are required to produce major changes in wild populations.'

The answer, based on new research, is that evolution can occur quickly, with just a few genes changing slightly, allowing newcomers to adapt and populate new and different environments."

From this Biology News article.