Rapid evolution of invasive animals could be allowing them to spread far and fast.

Animals that are introduced into new habitats can invade and disrupt ecosystems. Brad Ochocki and Tom Miller at Rice University in Houston, Texas, studied how evolution can affect the distance and speed at which bean beetles (Callosobruchus maculatus) spread across an experimental landscape. The researchers slowed evolution in some of the beetles by collecting and redistributing the insects after each generation had been allowed to disperse. This prevented the insects that had spread the farthest from mating with each other. After ten generations, the authors compared the beetles' distributions. In the population allowed to evolve freely, descendants of beetles from the leading edge of the invasion had travelled almost 9% further than had descendants of the shuffled beetles.

A second study, by Christopher Weiss-Lehman at the University of Colorado Boulder and his colleagues, observed red flour beetles (Tribolium castaneum) in a similar experiment and found that the freely evolving group expanded its range 6% faster.

The authors suggest that dispersal traits are inherited and that rapid evolution should be accounted for in forecasts of biological invasions.

Nature Commun. 8, 14315; 14303 (2017)