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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

In ongoing research to record the interaction of environment and evolution, a team led by University of California, Riverside biologist David Reznick has found new information illustrating the evolution of a population of guppies [sciencedaily.com].

Working in a river in Trinidad, the researchers determined which male guppies would contribute more offspring to the population as well as which would live longer and which would have a shorter lifespan.
...
The new work is part of research that Reznick has been doing since 1978. It involved transplanting guppies from a river with a diverse community of predators into a river with no predators -- except for one other fish species, an occasional predator -- to record how the guppies would evolve and how they might impact their environment.
...
To do this, the team, which includes Reznick's former graduate student Swanne P. Gordon and two undergraduates working in his lab, used scales from the guppies to archive their DNA. When they returned the guppies to the river and new unmarked guppies showed up, the latter were marked and samples of their scales were taken for study. In this way the team tracked the guppies' differential success in making babies and surviving.

"We could look at their appearance and see how male color pattern affected their ability to make babies or to survive," Reznick said. "We used the DNA from the scales to identify who their parents were. That means we could reconstruct their pedigree and eventually know over time their success for contributing offspring."

Who are they to play Flying Spaghetti Monster?!

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