Can Evolution Be Observed, and Therefore Proven?

Check out this answer from Consensus:

Evolution can be observed through genetic changes, experimental studies, and the fossil record. While proving evolution involves demonstrating that these changes are due to evolutionary processes, recent research has shown that genetic evolution can be somewhat predictable. Theoretical models and observational evidence provide strong support for the theory of evolution, despite the challenges in distinguishing between different sources of variation. Overall, the evidence for evolution is robust, making it one of the most well-supported theories in science.

The question of whether evolution can be observed and proven is a fundamental one in the field of biology. Evolutionary theory, which explains the diversity of life on Earth, is supported by a vast body of evidence from various scientific disciplines. This article explores the mechanisms through which evolution can be observed and the extent to which it can be proven, drawing on recent research findings.

Observing Evolution

Evolution can be observed in several ways, including through genetic changes in populations over time, fossil records, and experimental studies. One of the key aspects of observing evolution is understanding the genetic basis of evolutionary changes.

Genetic Evolution

Recent research has shown that genetic evolution is not entirely random but can be somewhat predictable. Evolutionarily relevant mutations tend to accumulate in specific genes and at particular positions within those genes. This predictability is influenced by gene function, the structure of genetic networks, and population biology. For instance, certain genes, known as “hotspot genes,” are more likely to undergo mutations that contribute to evolutionary changes1.

Experimental Evolution

Experimental evolution studies, where scientists observe evolutionary changes in controlled environments, provide direct evidence of evolution. These studies often involve microorganisms, such as bacteria, which have short generation times and can evolve rapidly. By observing these organisms over many generations, researchers can document evolutionary changes in real-time.

Proving Evolution

Proving evolution involves demonstrating that the observed changes in populations are due to evolutionary processes. This requires a combination of observational data, experimental evidence, and theoretical models.

Theoretical Models

Theoretical models play a crucial role in understanding and proving evolution. These models help scientists predict how populations will evolve under different conditions. For example, models of genetic evolution incorporate the specific functions and characteristics of genes to predict evolutionary outcomes1.

Observational Evidence

Observational evidence from the fossil record and comparative anatomy also supports the theory of evolution. Fossils provide a historical record of evolutionary changes, showing how species have changed over millions of years. Comparative anatomy reveals similarities between different species, suggesting common ancestry.

Challenges in Proving Evolution

One of the challenges in proving evolution is distinguishing between different sources of variation. For example, in cosmology, proving large-scale spatial homogeneity of the universe requires a fully determinate theory of source evolution or distance measures independent of source evolution2. Similarly, in evolutionary biology, distinguishing between genetic changes due to natural selection and those due to genetic drift or other factors can be challenging.

 

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Can evolution be observed, and therefore proven?

Markus Friedrich has answered Near Certain

An expert from Wayne State University in Evolutionary Biology

Absolutely. These days, there are many ways to observe evolution in real time. The best example I am aware of is the beautifully visualized adaptive evolution of bacteria along a gradient of antibiotic concentration on a “Mega-Plate” by the Kishony laboratory at Harvard Medical School: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plVk4NVIUh8

 

Can evolution be observed, and therefore proven?

Timothy Jackson has answered Near Certain

An expert from University of Melbourne in Evolutionary Biology, Philosophy, Toxicology

As Chris has pointed out, evolution is routinely observed. Importantly, however, this is not a matter of “proof” of evolution. Evolution is an observable fact, but “proof” is not a concept that we utilise in the natural sciences, it is only applicable within mathematics. The request for “proof” of evolution stems from a misunderstanding of what evolution actually is. Similarly, it’s not uncommon to hear people claim that “evolution is just a theory”. To reiterate – evolution is not a theory, it is an observable fact. Evolution is nothing more than “descent with change” – simply the fact that future states of systems (“things”) descend from (i.e. are built from) prior states, but are different from them (i.e. have changed). The “theory” element comes in when we attempt to explain certain sets of facts – theories in science are not quasi-facts awaiting proof, they are explanations of observables. A theory, like Natural Selection (which is itself a component of broader Darwinian theory, now known as the Modern, or Extended Synthesis), is an explanation which has been able to account for a lot of observables, and has yet to be strongly refuted (disconfirmed). A hypothesis is a proto-theory, a conjectured explanation that has yet to receive much support. So, remember, a “theory” in science is as good as it gets and is not a poor man’s fact! See the following links for more: https://tnwjackson.wordpress.com/2014/03/26/evolution-is-not-a-theory/ https://sympatheticpeople.com/2017/11/01/permanent-evolution/

 

Can evolution be observed, and therefore proven?

Richard Edwards has answered Near Certain

An expert from UNSW Sydney in Bioinformatics, Molecular Biology, Evolutionary Biology, Genomics, Genetics

Yes, evolution is proven beyond the slightest shadow of a doubt. In my research group, for example, we are studying a population of yeast (of the same species that makes bread and beer/wine) that was evolved in the lab to do something that the original population could not. It took five years and thousands of generations but they evolved from being barely able to grow under certain conditions, to be able to reproduce every two hours. The evolved strains show a lot of genetic incompatibility with their ancestors, so you could even describe them as new species.

Evolution is observable but, more than that, it is inevitable. Given what we know about biological systems, the difficult task is actually explaining how evolution could NOT happen. How could you stop it? There is certainly no known mechanism in nature to stop evolution. The closest we can get is that if an organism is already perfected adapted to its environment and that environment never changes, there would be no selective pressure for observable change. Even here, though, there would be random “neutral” evolution taking place at a genetic level. In reality, no environment is ever perfectly stable, so natural selection is always in action, and there is no sound basis for evolution to ever stop.

 

Can evolution be observed, and therefore proven?

Travis Hagey has answered Near Certain

An expert from Mississippi University for Women in Evolutionary Biology, Biomechanics

I agree with the previous explanations. Evolution is definitely observable, especially in organisms that grow and breed quickly (bacteria, fruit flies, yeast, etc). I also agree that there is a lot of confusion about when science “proves” things and what is a hypothesis and what is a theory. Like the previous posts explained, in science, a hypothesis is an educated guess about how a specific experiment will turn out (if I take the chain off my bicycle, it won’t work any more). A theory is a broad explanation based on years and years of experiments (chains are a vital part of how bicycles work). For example the theory of gravity, the theory that bacteria and viruses make us sick, the theory that material is made up of atoms, and the theory of evolution are just a few. These ideas are almost absolutely true. The great thing about science is that nothing is ever written in stone or proven. There could be an experiment someday that provides evidence that one of these theories isn’t true, but given the hundred of years of experiments and evidence we have supporting them, that seems really unlikely.

The original question also asked about speciation, which is more difficult to observe over only a few hundred years for a couple reasons. The first is that defining what a species is is harder than you’d think. There are actually multiple definitions of species. The one most people are familiar with is the biological species concept, which says that if two organisms can interbreed, then they’re the same species. This doesn’t always work in practice. Not all organisms mate, some simply clone themselves like bacteria, yeast, and even some plants and animals. So for clonal organisms, we need a different definition. We also know of lots of examples of distantly related organisms that can still successfully interbreed, even if they never would in the wild, like lions and tigers (ligers and tigons). Domesticated dogs, wolves, and coyotes are another example of things we’d call different species that can still hybridize. Domesticated cats can hybridize with African serval cats to make a hybrid breed of pet cats called Savanna cats. Domesticated cats can also breed with the Asian leopard cat to make the hybrid Bengal cat. So defining a species is actually really tough. Current methods usually look at the genetics of a group of organisms to see how different they are when compared to other closely related groups. If they’re different enough and it doesn’t look like they’ve been sharing DNA recently (interbreeding), then we would likely call then a different species. Often when you see headlines that claim scientists have discovered a new species, it’s often that we have simply discovered a groups of individuals from a species we already knew existed, but genetically they’re so different from all the other individuals in that species, that we call them a new species. Building up enough mutations to be considered a different species takes a long time, that’s why its hard to see speciation happen in real time, but there are a few examples.

One example is all of our domesticated plants and animals. We might not think of them as different species, but most of the organisms we work with everyday are wildly different than their wild counterparts and ancestors. For example wolves and dogs, chickens and the red jungle fowl, all barnyard animals, and all of our crop plants are very different. Instead of “survival of the fittest” deciding which individuals get the chance to breed each generation, in these cases, humans have been deciding which individuals get the chance to breed, but either way, it still resulted in the group of organisms changing slightly generation to generation, and over multiple generations, the group of organisms look, act, and have DNA that is much different than where they started. They have still evolved, so much so, we call dogs a different species than wolves and chickens a different species than their wild cousin the red jungle fowl.

In addition to domesticated animals, there are examples of instantaneous speciation. In species that can clone themselves (some plants and a couple animals), sometimes a huge genetic change can happen in one generation. In plants, sometimes an individual can accidentally duplicate a chunk or all of its DNA (polyploidy). In this situation, the new individual has DNA and traits that are very different than its parent(s) and we’d call it a new species (autopolyploidy). In other situations, two existing species can hybridize and create a new species that can clone itself and has extra copies of its DNA from both parent species (allopolyploidy). This is another example of instantaneous speciation. A great example of this is the New Mexico Whiptail lizard (Aspidoscelis neomexicanus), which is a clonal hybrid of two other lizard species.

The best example of traditional slow gradual speciation that we have observed to my knowledge is the work by Dr. Richard Lenski at Michigan State University. His lab has been growing the same group of E. coli since 1988. In 2008, they observed a subgroup of their E. coli that had started using a new chemical food source, which for a bacteria is a big deal. Species of bacteria are often defined based on what food sources they can use. In essence, over the course of their experiment, a new species of bacteria had evolved in the lab. Remember that this took 20 years to happen. So even in the fastest growing and breeding organisms like bacteria, it can take 20 years for a new species to evolve using slow gradual changes. This is one reason why it’s so tough to observe speciation. It happens really slowly.

Despite this, we do know of examples that look like speciation is in progress though. Noteworthy examples include the three-spine stickleback. This small freshwater fish colonized lakes near the pacific ocean around the Northern Hemisphere since the last ice age around 11,000 years ago. The fish in the lakes of British Columbia, Canada have beens studied extensively. Fish that colonized each lake from the pacific ocean after the last ice age adapted to live in different parts of each lake, Fish that lived in the water column and fish that lived on the bottom of the lake each had their own changes in anatomy, diet, and DNA. These different subgroups in each lake have also stopped interbreeding, even through genetically they are still compatible (like wolves and coyotes). This process of a group of organisms splitting into two separate groups and adapting to two different habitats is called ecological speciation. We have examples of this happening in lizards in New Mexico and beach mice in Florida and Alabama. In both of these examples, subgroups of lizards or mice have split off from the rest of their species and developed adaptations to live in new environments within the last few thousand years.

A even more recent example of this type of splitting and adapting is currently happening in Puerto Rico, where a group of crested anole lizards (Anolis cristatellus) have started living in urban environments within the last few hundred years, trading their traditional lifestyle of living on trees to living on the walls of buildings and fences. These urban lizards have evolved a different anatomy that help them living on artificial structures when compared to their tree-living cousins. Although we don’t consider them a different species (yet), this process of a group splitting and adapting to a new environment can definitely lead to the formation of a new species over many generations. It just takes a while (many, many generations) for enough differences to accumulate for them to be considered a different species.

 

Can evolution be observed, and therefore proven?

Chris Woodruff has answered Near Certain

An expert from Walter+Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Bioinformatics, Optics

The principle of survival of the fittest as a basis for selection of traits – the key to evolution – is routinely observed, and used, in molecular biology. Cancer evolution is a simple example, Alon has carried out experiments on bacteria showing it operating, George Church and colleagues have been using it to develop optimised molecules, etc..

 

Can evolution be observed, and therefore proven?

Kathryn Hall has answered Near Certain

An expert from Queensland Museum in Biology

The previous replies have all been excellent, and I am in agreement with the other researchers.

There is little that I would like to add, beyond stating that “evolution” still seems to connote, in the non-science world, something which is to be feared. Apart from any maxims like, the only thing to fear is fear itself, fearing a natural process like evolution is a bit like fearing digestion or gravity. As many of the other researchers have pointed out, evolution is just change, change which accumulates over time – a lot like the old parlour game of whispers, you start out saying “the rose is red” and by the end of the game it is “the goat is dead” or something like that – evolution is similar in that the changes to an animal’s appearance (phenotype) accumulate as time passes and sooner or later the animal (or plant or bacterium…) looks substantially different. Because the change is incremental, it takes long periods of time before it can be observed.

It is possible to see macroscopic evolution in human lifetimes, and the classic textbook example we always had at uni when I was an undergrad, and later a tutor, was Biston betularia. The Wikipedia article is great: peppered moth evolution. Essentially, the peppered moth rests on tree trunks and is very well camouflaged. The moths changed from speckled white to almost solid black in a short space of time; this change correlated with the blackening of the trees in the forests from coal dust during the Industrial Revolution. Now that coal dust pollution is abating in the UK and the tree trunks are becoming lighter, the moths are returning to their speckled peppery appearance. This classic example demonstrates the principles of natural selection and dominance of traits.

Another way that people can observe evolution in action in their own lifetimes is just to look at their relations. You might have your mother’s nose and your father’s ears. In my family, my grandmother’s trademark very cute nose was passed to my uncle, but only some of his daughters. Sadly for me, I didn’t get my grandmother’s nose, but nor did I get my father’s or mother’s. My nose is a hybrid, short like my maternal line, but straight like my paternal line. I am sure in your own families, you can also observe particular features that persist strongly through the generations. This is evolution in action.

In biological systems, the principles of evolution act, and can be observed, at many levels – sub-cellular, cellular, whole organism, species, ecosystems – to scientists, evolution just means accumulated change over time. Sometimes, what is lost is as interesting as what dominates in a system. A change doesn’t need to be “better” to persist, it just needs to be “fit” (which is to say, not harmful enough to prevent reproduction) and able to be passed on to the next generation. There are no doubt many examples of changes that have been neither here nor there in terms of their so-called benefit, but since they have done no harm, have persisted. These are neutral changes. Of course, much of the language in evolution can be very loaded (better, neutral, deleterious, advantageous), and I think that is from where a lot of the popular uneasiness or disquiet about evolution comes in to the minds of non-scientists. I can remember many lectures though, where it was drummed into me that evolution is not teleological (that is to say, with a defined end-point, or striving to a particular future goal), and if we think about it like that, there really is nothing to worry about. Change is all around us, all the time, and we should be truly glad that we, and all the organisms sharing our planet, have the capacity for change, because as change happens, as it will, we will be (mostly) able to survive (and maybe even thrive) in the new conditions.

 

Can evolution be observed, and therefore proven?

Hayley Clements has answered Near Certain

An expert from University of Cape Town in Ecology

For long-lived species that do not reproduce often, it can be challenging to ‘observe’ evolution in a human life-time. That is why many scientists who study evolution focus on species that have short life-cycles (like rodents, or insects – the fruit fly is a popular study species). In these species, it is certainly possible to observe evolution over a short time period (even a matter of weeks).

There have also been cases where evolution has been observed outside of the laboratory. There is research to show that trophy hunting of antelope (where large males with large horns are most desirable to hunters) can cause smaller horns to be selected for (since these males are less likely to get hunted and therefore more likely to survive to reproduce) – so that’s an example of human activities influencing evolution in animals over a period of a few decades. See this paper here if you’d like to read more about this: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature02177

 

Can evolution be observed, and therefore proven?

Ross Alford has answered Near Certain

An expert from James Cook University in Conservation Science, Evolutionary Biology, Infectious diseases, Ecology

Evolution has been observed. Many times. Evolution of antibiotic and pesticide resistance. Speciation in hybrid plants and animals, evolution of heavy metal resistance and acquisition of reproductive isolation in plants on tailings heaps. The equations for Hardy-Weinberg euqilibrium, which mathematically define the conditions necessary for no change in gene frequencies in populations and thus no evolution, require such absurdly stringent conditions to be met that they effectively prove that all populations of organisms must be evolving all of the time. The notion that evolution is random and unobservable is not supported by science at all; in fact science demonstrates clearly that it is lack of evolution that is impossible.

 

Can evolution be observed, and therefore proven?

Jonathan Sandoval-Castillo has answered Near Certain

An expert from Flinders University in Evolutionary Biology, Genomics, Conservation Science

Evolution can be observed and has been proven. There are some small changes affecting the fitness of populations or species that can happen in one generation and can therefore be observed in a human lifetime. Most of the time, speciation requires several generations to allow the accumulation of enough small changes between two populations of the same species to become different species, making it more difficult to observe this process in a human lifetime. However, there are several examples of rapid speciation, for example by polyploidizations (whole-genome duplication), a phenomenon relatively common in plants. 

To my knowledge, the video suggested by Markus Friedrich is the best example of adaptive evolution in real time. 

 

Can evolution be observed, and therefore proven?

Benjamin Hunt has answered Near Certain

An expert from Birmingham University in Cardiovascular Disease, Clinical Trials, Clinical Research, Cell Biology, Stroke, Microbiology, Diabetes, Biology, Evolutionary Biology, Molecular Biology, Public Health

Absolutely!

There are two important factors that make this possible though: 1. an organism with a very short generation gap 2. a strong selection pressure. The most obvious example I can think of is genetic adaptation of bacteria to antibiotic exposure. The antibiotic inadvertently selects out the individual bacterium with an advantageous mutation which can then multiply while the rest of the population don’t (hence the bacterium with the mutation survives and the rest don’t due to the selection pressure being so strong).

Another example is the production of any domesticated breed of of animal. Because the generation gap isn’t that much different from our own, these changes aren’t observed through “natural selection” over time (observable to us) but through the act of breeders picking out advantageous or desirable traits and cross-breeding animals who possess those traits, the selection pressure (the breeder in this case) is much stronger and the desired traits can be observed in many many fewer generations (and within our lifetimes). The selector is artificial in this sense but the process is the same.