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Long-term studies provide unique insights into evolution

Nature volume 639, pages 589–601 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

From experimental evolution in the laboratory to sustained measurements of natural selection in the wild, long-term studies have revolutionized our understanding of evolution. By directly investigating evolutionary dynamics in real time, these approaches have provided unparallelled insights into the complex interplay between evolutionary process and pattern. These approaches can reveal oscillations, stochastic fluctuations and systematic trends that unfold over extended periods, expose critical time lags between environmental shifts and population responses, and illuminate how subtle effects may accumulate into significant evolutionary patterns. Long-term studies can also reveal otherwise cryptic trends that unfold over extended periods, and offer the potential for serendipity: observing rare events that spur new evolutionary hypotheses and research directions. Despite the challenges of conducting long-term research, exacerbated by modern funding landscapes favouring short-term projects, the contributions of long-term studies to evolutionary biology are indispensable. This is particularly true in our rapidly changing, human-dominated world, where such studies offer a crucial window into how environmental changes and altered species interactions shape evolutionary trajectories. In this Review article, we showcase the groundbreaking discoveries of long-term evolutionary studies, underscoring their crucial role in advancing our understanding of the complex nature of evolution across multiple systems and timescales.

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Fig. 1: Rapid hybrid speciation of Darwin’s finches on Daphne Major island in the Galápagos6,9.
Fig. 2: Temporal trends in fitness and mutations in the LTEE with E. coli70.
Fig. 3: Phenotypic plasticity and adaptive evolution contribute to advancing flowering phenology in response to climate change100,101.
Fig. 4: Predicting evolution in response to natural selection137.
Fig. 5: Investigating the evolution-to-ecology feedback cycle in island lizard communities25.

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Acknowledgements

We thank J. Anderson, Z. Blount, S. Brown, T. Grainger, J. Losos, M. Moore and K. Thompson for valuable feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript; B. Sheldon, D. Schluter and an anonymous reviewer for critical feedback that greatly improved our manuscript; and M. Belan (ArtSci Studios) for the illustrations. This work was supported by grants from the US National Institutes of Health (grant no. 5R35GM138030) and the NSF Division of Environmental Biology (grant no. DEB-1845363) to W.C.R.

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    James T. Stroud & William C. Ratcliff

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Stroud, J.T., Ratcliff, W.C. Long-term studies provide unique insights into evolution. Nature 639, 589–601 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08597-9

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