How animals are rapidly evolving due to climate change

Lizards and huricanes

He decided to prove his theory by reconstructing a ´´hurricane´´ with a leafblower when he couldn´t take measurements during the hurricane. No lizards were harmed during the experiment. The theory was proven! The lizards with larger back legs and almost no toepads were blown away quickly than those with them. In the end, the difference is just a couple of seconds but these precious seconds can decide a survival or a death.

Collin realised that he saw an evolution in action, the selection of the fitter. He checked a wider area and discovered that everywhere it is the same. The lizards have evolved not in thousands of years but only in one season! 

Squids and higher sea temperatures

In the waters of Mexico, in the Gulf of California fishers discovered a strange phenomenon between the species called humboldt squids. They got smaller, so they stopped catching it. Thats when scientists arrived to observe the situation.  

Humboldt squids are also known as jumbo squids because of its size. They can grow up to 4,5, or even 6 feet big (1.83 meters). But now, they got significantly smaller. Scientists discovered truly small squids so they were thinking what had changed. They discovered that the squids weren´t juvenille or immature squids, they were fully grown squids in reproductive age. The reason is the humboldt squids had to give up longer life for a survival. They were carrying out their lives in half the time they used to so it was compensated for size. Dr. William Gilly measured the squid they caught and found out a 50% reducion of their body size in response to the stress of the higher water temperatures. 

This adaptation is known as plasticity. 

Plasticity is an attribute that all organisms have but some of them have more of it, some of them less. It is the albility to deal with the environmnet the organism is currently in. For example we humans, our body adapts by creating more red blood cells when we travel to higher altitudes to cope with the low density of air and less oxygen. This attribute is already in our genom so it is not gained. The humblodt squid has a lot of plasticity so it could quickly evolve facing the higher temperatures. 

Should we consider this as a win for the humboldt squid? We don´t know, but what we know is that those organisms with plastic response and higher plasticity, like the squids, have a great advantage over species with plasticity in lower level.