(May 11, 2014 at 5:24 am)max-greece Wrote: I have a theory, based entirely on thin air at the moment, that a species facing environmental change and therefore under stress may prove to be more likely to experience mutation that one that is happily settled in its niche in its environment.
This might explain why some groups have experienced little dramatic change over hundreds of millions of years (crocodilians for example) whilst others (e.g. Whales) have undergone mind-blowing adaptation.
Dude, that's stabilizing selection.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stabilizing_selection
