Which came first, the organism or the environment?

A recent article in Scientific American highlighted a few very interesting cases of chicken-or-the-egg, in relation to organisms' adaptations to environments. We often talk about how species adapt to living in niches, especially in terms of physical traits like patterns and coloration that help them either camouflage or signal danger. In each of the cases in the article, however, researchers look at what happens with broader ecological changes when species that are specifically adapted to one environment are placed in another -- it's pretty incredible!

Click to read "How Warp-Speed Evolution Is Transforming Ecology"

-Courtney Sexton