In 1924, Arctic charr from Lake Geneva were stocked into Lake Allos; a century later...

Lake Allos (French Alps), the largest natural high-altitude lake in Europe and one of the two study sites for this research. Credit: Hervé Rogissart In 1924, Arctic charr from Lake Geneva were introduced into Lake Allos. A hundred years later, scientists found that their descendants had developed different metabolic responses, even when raised under the same laboratory conditions.A new study by researchers from Université Savoie Mont Blanc-INRAE in France found that two populations of Arctic charr (Salvelinus alpinus) developed distinct physiological traits after being separated for just 100 years. Published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the study shows that cold-water freshwater fish can adapt to new environments much faster than scientists once believed.Evolution is often thought to take thousands or even millions of years. However, when small populations become isolated in very different environments, the process can happen much more quickly."This natural experiment gave us a rare chance to study how quickly populations can become different after moving into a new environment," said Hervé Rogissart, the study's first author, in an interview with Phys.org."We also wanted...