Rapid evolution of flowering time in response to climate changes

A new study by Franks et al in today’s P.N.A.S., demonstrates the rapid evolution of flowering time as a response to climate change. They took stored ancestral seeds from a pre-drought population of Brassica rapa and compared how long it took the ancestral plants, the modern post-drought plants and hybrids of the two to flower.

The shortened growing season caused by the drought led to rapid adaptive evolution for quicker flowering times, in just a few generations.

Posted on timeJanuary 24th, 2007 by userSimon Greenhill



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