Overview
- The peer-reviewed analysis, published December 15 in PNAS by University of Vermont and University of Cambridge collaborators, reports divergent outcomes under environmental variability.
- By contrasting many fluctuating regimes with static ones, the team shows some patterns open routes to higher fitness whereas others trap populations on lower peaks.
- The authors warn that conclusions from single populations in a single setting can misrepresent a species’ capacity to adapt.
- Initial conditions and evolutionary history strongly constrained trajectories, indicating that one population cannot stand in for a species.
- The findings inform questions on climate adaptation and antibiotic resistance and align with AI challenges in continual learning and meta-learning, with lead authors set to continue the work in Tübingen.