For certain fishes, evolution is easy. After tracking the evolution of teeth in cichlid fishes from Africa, a team of researchers has found that these fishes have developed the ability to evolve rapidly, allowing them to adapt their teeth readily for different habitats and diets. This ability, the researchers report today in a study in Nature, helps these fishes split off into new species faster than any other fishes and, for that matter, any other vertebrates.
“This changes the way we think about key innovations,” said Nick Peoples, a study author and a graduate student at the University of California, Davis Department of Evolution and Ecology, according to a press release.
Indeed, the findings indicate that the ease of evolutionary innovation is as important in driving speciation as an evolutionary innovation is itself, speeding the development of new species in easily evolving lineages.
