Yellowstone Wolves: Ecological and Evolutionary Change

We all learned back in basic science that environmental changes can affect an animal's characteristics. Remember how the Industrial Revolution affected moths throughout Britain?  As trees and buildings became more covered in soot, moths that were originally pale evolved into a black color, proving our effect on the natural world.

According to a press release distributed by the National Science Foundation, the environment is similarly affecting wolves in America's Yellowstone National Park.  That's based on a study, part of the Yellowstone Wolf Project, in which various characteristics of the wolves since their reintroduction to the park in 1995 were tracked and reported. The press release reports that "Some tracked characteristics--such as population size--are related to population ecology. Other tracked characteristics--such as coat color--are genetically determined through evolution."

Tim Coulson, a study researcher from Imperial College London, told LiveScience that "Biologists and people who study wild populations in animals have been noticing over the last decade or so [of studies] that when you change the environment around a species — climate change, introduction of new species, disease epidemics, etc. — you don't just change the size of the population, the number of individuals living there, you often change the characteristics of the animals."

For the most part, researchers looked at the impact of environmental changes on the population of wolves in Yellowstone National Park.  But what the results tell us is that evolutionary changes can occur quite rapidly.  This is something to keep in mind as the effects of global warming continue to alter the world and its inhabitants.