Is the outcome of evolution predictable?
If one would rewind the tape of life, would evolution result in the same outcome? The Harvard evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould came up with this famous thought experiment. He suggested that evolution would not repeat itself: the role of random processes in the origin of biodiversity was too important and hence evolution was not predictable. Konstanz evolutionary biologists around Prof. Axel Meyer have now described parallel evolution of two closely related, but geographically isolated populations of cichlid fish in Nicaraguan crater lakes. This repeated outcome of evolution is best interpreted as evidence for similar adaptation to similar Darwinian natural selection pressure – and suggests somewhat deterministic evolutionary trajectories. The findings of the Konstanz study have been published in Nature Communications.