Through feedback loop, species' evolution found to drive environmental changes

New Delhi, Jun 6 (PTI) A new research in the small islands of Bahamas has found that evolutionary change in leg length of a lizards species, in turn, fed back into the environment by making ecological changes to aspects like vegetation growth and spider populations.

A classic example of how environmental change drives species evolution is that of the textbook evolutionary story of peppered moths.

According to the story, during the Industrial Evolution, as the coal smoke darkened tree barks near England's cities, black-bodied moths, being less conspicuous targets for predators, thrived and became dominant. The numbers of white-bodied ones, on the other hand, quickly reduced.