PubMed · 2026-06-10
A major review of 'resurrection studies' — experiments that compare plants grown from old stored seeds versus modern seeds from the same populations — finds that wild plants are evolving rapidly in response to climate change, most often by flowering earlier and becoming better at surviving drought. This evolution is real genetic change, not just the plant adjusting to conditions on the fly.
Rapid evolutionary change was detected in over half of 61 resurrection studies reviewed, and that evolution was frequently adaptive — not just random drift.
Annual plant species evolved earlier flowering times and more resource-hungry leaf traits compared to their ancestors, with the shift toward drought escape being a consistent pattern across both annuals and perennials.
Annual plants evolved increased flexibility (plasticity) in flowering time and physiology under drought, but reduced flexibility in leaf traits — perennials showed no detectable evolutionary change in plasticity at all.