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When it comes to evolution,
a species’ past has a massive bearing on what it might become. That’s the
latest message from a 20-year-long experiment in evolution, which shows
how small twists of fate can take organisms down very different evolutionary
paths.
The role of history in evolution is a hotly debated topic. The late Stephen Jay Gouldwas a firm believer in its importance and held the view that innocuous historical events can have massive repercussions, often making the difference between survival and extinction. To him, every genetic change is an “accident of history” that makes some subsequent changes more likely and others less so. Evolution, as a result, is “fundamentally quirky and unpredictable”. In his book Wonderful Life, Gould imagined that if we replayed life’s tape from some point in the past, evolution would go down very different paths than the ones it has currently taken.
Another eminent palaeontologist, Simon Conway Morris, disagreed. He argued that life can weave its way down any number of evolutionary routes, but that its “destinations are limited”. He saw the fact that living...
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