UCSB Scientists Discover Example of ‘Abrupt Evolution’

When most people think of evolution, they think of slow changes over long periods of time. So when UCSB biologist Scott Hodges, doctoral student Zachary Cabin, and their colleagues identified a case of sudden evolutionary change in the Colorado blue columbine flower, they knew they had found something special.

In their recent paper published in Current Biology, the scientists describe a population of columbines that revealed stark differences in their petals and sepals. Rather than the five petals and five sepals of the normal flowers, the new version had 10 sepals, and their functionality was quite a bit different.

Hodges has been studying columbines for about 30 years, about as long as Cabin has been alive. When they heard rumors about the columbine variations, they decided to see them in their natural Colorado habitat the summer of 2014. They arrived in late June when the plants were flowering and returned again in early August to collect seeds for paternity analyses.