Resurrection ecology

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"Resurrection ecology" is an evolutionary biology technique whereby researchers hatch dormant eggs from lake sediments to study animals as they existed decades ago. It is a new approach that might allow scientists to observe evolution as it occurred, by comparing the animal forms hatched from older eggs with their extant descendants.

One such researcher in the field is W. Charles Kerfoot of Michigan Technological University whose results were published in the journal Limnology and Oceanography. He reported on success in a search for "resting eggs" of zooplankton that are dormant in Portage Lake on Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The lake has undergone a considerable amount of change over the last 100 years including flooding by copper mine debris, dredging, and eutrophication.

Although the more esoteric demonstration of natural selection is alone a valuable aspect of the study described, there is a clear ecological implication in the discovery that very old zooplankton eggs have survived in the lake: the potential still exists, if and when this environment is restored to something of a more pristine nature, for at least some of the original (pre-disturbance) inhabitants to re-establish populations once presumed lost. The genes valuable to survival of those species in a restored environment are still "readily" available and may be quickly assimilated by the modern populations, perhaps requiring no more than a fortuitous disturbance of the bottom.