Resurrection Ecology: Observing Evolution in Real Time

Ian C. Langtree - Writer/Editor for Disabled World (DW)
Published: 2025/11/15
Publication Type: Informative
Category Topic: Anthropology and Disability - Academic Publications

Page Content: Synopsis - Introduction - Main - Insights, Updates

Synopsis: In an era where climate change accelerates at unprecedented rates and biodiversity faces mounting pressures, scientists have discovered an extraordinary tool hidden in plain sight - dormant life stages preserved in lake sediments and soil seed banks that act as natural time capsules. Resurrection ecology represents a revolutionary approach that allows researchers to literally "resurrect" organisms from the past, comparing ancestral populations with their modern descendants to observe evolution in action. This emerging field bridges evolutionary biology, ecology, and conservation science, offering unprecedented insights into how species respond to environmental change over timescales ranging from decades to centuries.

As we struggle to predict how life on Earth will adapt to rapid anthropogenic change, resurrection ecology provides not just a window into the past, but a compass for navigating an uncertain future. The following examination explores this fascinating discipline, its methodologies, applications, and the profound implications it holds for understanding evolutionary processes and managing biodiversity in our changing world - Disabled World (DW).

Introduction

Resurrection Ecology: Rewinding Evolution Through Dormant Life

The capacity to directly observe evolutionary change over historical timescales has long remained one of biology's most elusive goals. While contemporary evolutionary studies typically rely on spatial comparisons among populations or laboratory experiments spanning a few generations, these approaches often fail to capture the full complexity of evolutionary dynamics in natural systems. Resurrection ecology offers a fundamentally different perspective by exploiting a remarkable property shared by many organisms: the production of dormant propagules that can remain viable for decades or even centuries while buried in sediments or preserved in seed banks.

Main Content

The term "resurrection ecology" was coined by Kerfoot, Robbins, and Weider (1999) and later refined by Kerfoot and Weider (2004), though the conceptual foundation emerged from earlier work on seed bank evolutionary dynamics. This approach has transformed our understanding of microevolutionary processes by enabling researchers to germinate or hatch dormant eggs, spores, or seeds from dated sediment layers or archived collections, then compare these "resurrected" ancestral organisms directly with their contemporary descendants under controlled conditions.

The power of resurrection ecology lies in its ability to eliminate many confounding variables that plague comparative studies. Rather than comparing different populations that vary in both their environments and genetic backgrounds, researchers can examine temporal changes within the same population lineage, providing direct evidence of evolutionary adaptation to documented environmental changes (Burge et al., 2018). This temporal perspective reveals not just that evolution has occurred, but how rapidly it proceeds and which selective pressures drive specific trait changes.

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Theoretical Foundation and Methodology

Resurrection ecology rests on the intersection of dormancy biology, paleoecology, and evolutionary genetics. Many aquatic and terrestrial organisms have evolved sophisticated dormancy mechanisms that allow them to survive unfavorable conditions - drought, freezing, predation pressure, or seasonal changes. These dormant stages, whether they are seeds, eggs, cysts, or spores, can accumulate in sediments or soil, creating natural archives of past genetic diversity.

The methodology typically proceeds through several stages. First, researchers obtain sediment cores from lake bottoms or soil profiles, which are then dated using various techniques including radiometric dating with isotopes such as lead-210 or cesium-137. These dates establish a chronology that links sediment layers to specific time periods, often with resolution down to individual years (Burge et al., 2018). Next, dormant propagules are extracted from these dated layers, cleaned, and induced to germinate or hatch under laboratory conditions. Hatching success is constrained by egg viability and drops with age, with greater than 75% hatching from sediment as old as 20 years, but greatly reduced (much less than 1%) hatching in centuries-old layers (Weider et al., 1997; Frisch et al., 2014).

The resurrected organisms are then raised alongside contemporary descendants collected from the same location, creating what researchers term "common garden" experiments. By growing both ancestral and descendant organisms under identical environmental conditions, scientists can isolate genetic changes from environmental effects, revealing true evolutionary shifts in traits such as growth rate, morphology, life history characteristics, or stress tolerance.

Two complementary approaches have emerged within resurrection ecology: the "back-in-time" approach and the "forward-in-time" approach. The back-in-time approach uses fortuitous collections of seeds or dormant propagules found in natural sediments, while forward-in-time approaches involve purposefully establishing archived propagule banks for future research (Franks et al., 2018). Project Baseline exemplifies this forward-thinking strategy, having collected and stored millions of seeds from diverse plant species across the United States specifically to enable future resurrection experiments over the next five decades (Etterson et al., 2016).

Model Organisms and Systems

Daphnia: The Flagship Model

The planktonic crustacean Daphnia, commonly known as the water flea, has been developed as the primary model organism in resurrection ecology. These tiny freshwater inhabitants possess several characteristics that make them ideal for such studies. Daphnia produce dormant eggs called ephippia - protective casings containing two eggs that result from sexual reproduction. These ephippia can survive in lake sediments for decades, playing an important role in permitting dispersal across generations or even allowing species to re-establish after being absent from the water column for many years.

The Daphnia system offers remarkable experimental advantages. These organisms typically reproduce asexually under favorable conditions, allowing researchers to work with clonal lineages that eliminate genetic recombination as a confounding factor. They have short generation times, well-established laboratory protocols, and documented sensitivity to various environmental stressors (Burge et al., 2018). Moreover, Daphnia play pivotal ecological roles in freshwater food webs, making their evolutionary responses relevant to ecosystem-level processes.

Pioneering studies by Hairston and colleagues used clones of Daphnia galeata hatched from Lake Constance sediments to reconstruct the evolution of tolerance to dietary cyanobacteria. Lineages from the 1960s, before cyanobacterial blooms became frequent, were much more sensitive to cyanobacteria than clones from the late 1970s, after 15 years of eutrophication-caused blooms. Similarly, Cousyn and colleagues demonstrated rapid behavioral evolution in response to changing predation pressure, with Daphnia magna populations showing striking alterations in phototactic behavior plasticity correlated with historical fish stocking intensity (Cousyn et al., 2001).

One of the most compelling demonstrations of resurrection ecology's power came from studies of host-parasite coevolution. Research comparing resurrected dormant stages of Daphnia and its microparasites from Belgian pond sediments with present-day descendants revealed steady increases in parasite virulence through time, yet infection rates between hosts and their parasite contemporaries remained largely unchanged - a remarkable empirical demonstration of Red Queen dynamics in nature (Decaestecker et al., 2007).

Plant Resurrection Studies

While Daphnia has dominated aquatic resurrection ecology, plant systems offer equally valuable insights into evolutionary adaptation. Seeds represent ideal study subjects because they naturally enter dormancy, many species produce abundant seeds that accumulate in soil seed banks, and viability can persist for decades or longer under proper conditions (Franks et al., 2018).

Studies resurrecting stored seeds have demonstrated the evolution of early flowering in Brassica species and other annual plants, showing rapid adaptive responses to changing climate conditions over just a few decades. These phenological shifts carry profound ecological significance, as flowering time affects pollinator interactions, seed production, and ultimately population persistence under climate change.

Project Baseline represents the most ambitious forward-in-time plant resurrection initiative, including 100-200 maternal lines of each of 61 species collected from over 831 populations across the United States, totaling approximately 78,000 maternal lines. This strategically designed collection stores seeds at -18°C at a USDA facility, where they will remain viable for decades, enabling future researchers to compare ancestral populations with their descendants across both temporal and spatial dimensions.

Recent studies combining resurrection ecology with field transplant experiments have pushed the methodology further. Researchers growing both ancestral and descendant plants in contemporary natural environments - rather than just greenhouse common gardens - have observed differential survival and fitness that more accurately reflect adaptation to real-world conditions (Rauschkolb et al., 2023). For instance, studies on species including Melica ciliata showed descendants exhibiting lower mortality and larger size compared to ancestors under exceptionally hot and dry conditions, providing direct evidence of adaptive evolution.

Other Model Systems

Beyond Daphnia and plants, resurrection ecology has expanded to numerous other taxa, each offering unique advantages. Artemia (brine shrimp) provides an excellent model for studying adaptation to extreme salinity, pollution, parasites, and climate change, with cysts that can remain viable in sediments for decades or centuries (Lenormand et al., 2018).

Diatoms represent another promising frontier. These microscopic algae produce dormant cells in response to environmental triggers such as temperature, light changes, and nutrient limitation. Härnström and colleagues captured over 40,000 generations of genetic history for the diatom Skeletonema marinoi, revived from sediments dated up to 100 years old. Diatoms' prevalence across environmental and temporal scales, combined with their importance in paleoecology, positions them as valuable models for future resurrection studies.

Even microorganisms have entered the resurrection arena. Viable cyanophages (viruses that infect cyanobacteria) have been isolated from sediments up to 50 years old and successfully used to infect modern bacterial cultures, revealing insights into virus-host coevolution and providing tools to study evolutionary medicine questions regarding resurrected pathogens (Burge et al., 2018).

Applications and Research Directions

Climate Change Adaptation

Perhaps the most pressing application of resurrection ecology involves understanding how organisms respond to anthropogenic climate change. By comparing organisms from pre-industrial or early industrial periods with contemporary descendants, researchers can directly quantify evolutionary responses to documented climate shifts.

Resurrection ecology provides a framework for standardizing cross-system comparisons of ecological responses to global climate change, making use of propagule banks that integrate past environmental histories in the gene pools of their organisms (Angeler, 2007). This approach has revealed rapid evolution of flowering time, drought tolerance, heat resistance, and other climate-relevant traits across diverse plant and animal species.

Studies examining temperature adaptation in Daphnia have shown evolutionary shifts in thermal tolerance corresponding to documented lake warming, with some populations evolving increased heat tolerance over just 30-40 years (Geerts et al., 2015). These findings suggest that at least some populations possess sufficient genetic variation and adaptive capacity to track environmental change, though the pace of adaptation varies considerably among populations and species.

Eutrophication and Pollution Responses

Human activities have dramatically altered nutrient cycles and introduced countless pollutants into aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Resurrection ecology has proven invaluable for documenting evolutionary responses to these stressors.

Life-history experiments of resurrected Daphnia clonal lineages support the capacity for adaptive responses to toxic algae, eutrophication, and multiple environmental stressors. Studies have shown evolved tolerance to cyanobacterial toxins in lakes experiencing harmful algal blooms, and genetic shifts associated with heavy metal pollution in urban waterways. Research comparing "modern" versus "ancient" Daphnia clones found that younger clones were competitively superior under high nutrient conditions that mimicked cultural eutrophication, suggesting evolutionary optimization to novel environmental conditions (Frisch et al., 2014).

Host-Parasite and Predator-Prey Coevolution

The temporal perspective offered by resurrection ecology has illuminated the dynamics of antagonistic coevolution in ways impossible through spatial comparisons alone. The demonstration of Red Queen dynamics in Daphnia-parasite systems represents a landmark achievement, showing that host and parasite populations engage in continuous evolutionary arms races that maintain infectivity patterns despite rapid genetic change on both sides (Decaestecker et al., 2007).

Studies have shown that susceptibility of Daphnia magna to the bacterial pathogen Pasteuria ramosa is largely genetic with minimal plasticity influence, and can evolve rapidly, with parasite-mediated selection altering the outcome of clonal competition in experimental metapopulations.

Conservation and Restoration Applications

Resurrection ecology holds considerable promise for conservation biology and ecological restoration. The discovery that very old zooplankton eggs have survived in lake sediments reveals potential for species presumed lost to re-establish populations once disturbed environments are restored to more pristine conditions. This "dispersal from the past" concept suggests that sediment egg banks may serve as genetic reservoirs for ecosystem recovery.

Insights from resurrection ecology could be used to manage gene flow between populations and help prevent extinctions of threatened populations, as well as to manage ecosystem structure and function and maintain ecological sustainability. By understanding which traits have changed evolutionarily versus through plasticity, conservation managers can better predict population responses to restoration efforts and identify populations with genetic variants suited to specific management goals.

Agricultural and Aquacultural Applications

Resurrection ecology research may benefit agriculture and aquaculture through the study of dormancy-related traits, which could help identify agronomic genes related to seed dormancy and other important life-history features. Historical seed collections from agricultural varieties could reveal genetic variants lost during modern breeding programs but potentially valuable for enhancing crop resilience under changing environmental conditions. Similarly, understanding dormancy mechanisms in aquaculture species like Artemia could improve production systems.

Advantages and Benefits

Resurrection ecology offers numerous methodological and conceptual advantages over traditional evolutionary studies. Most fundamentally, it provides direct observation of evolution rather than inference from spatial patterns. By comparing ancestors and descendants from the same population, researchers eliminate genetic background differences that complicate interpretation of spatial comparisons (Franks et al., 2018).

The temporal perspective reveals evolutionary dynamics at ecologically relevant timescales - years to centuries rather than the thousands to millions of years examined by paleontology, or the few generations typical of laboratory evolution experiments. This intermediate timescale matches the pace of anthropogenic environmental change, making resurrection ecology particularly valuable for predicting responses to ongoing global change.

The approach also allows testing evolutionary predictions with unprecedented rigor. Researchers can measure evolutionary rates, assess whether trait changes are adaptive by comparing fitness of ancestors versus descendants, quantify the contributions of genetic change versus phenotypic plasticity, and even link phenotypic evolution to genomic changes through whole-genome sequencing of resurrected organisms (Orsini et al., 2012).

Resurrection ecology creates natural "evolution experiments" where environmental changes serve as unplanned but well-documented treatments. Lake eutrophication, invasive species introductions, climate warming, and pollution events all create selective pressures whose effects can be quantified by comparing pre- and post-disturbance organisms. This retrospective experimental design would be impossible to replicate deliberately given ethical and practical constraints.

The archival nature of dormant propagules also provides insurance against future research needs. Collections like Project Baseline will enable scientists decades from now to address questions we haven't yet conceived, using technologies not yet invented. This forward-thinking approach represents a scientific investment that compounds over time.

Limitations and Challenges

Despite its considerable strengths, resurrection ecology faces important limitations that researchers must carefully consider. The most fundamental constraint involves propagule viability, which declines with age. While some eggs or seeds remain viable for centuries, viability drops dramatically in older sediments, limiting temporal depth and potentially introducing survival bias (Burge et al., 2018).

This survival bias represents a subtle but significant challenge. If certain genotypes survive dormancy better than others, and if these survival traits correlate with the phenotypes of interest, resurrection studies might overestimate or underestimate evolutionary change. For example, if seeds with higher dormancy levels also tend toward later flowering, studies of flowering time evolution using old seeds might systematically bias results. Weis (2018) suggests that structured pedigree data and statistical corrections may help address this issue, though solutions remain imperfect.

Taxonomic limitations also constrain the field's scope. The utility of resurrection ecology is limited to organisms that produce long-term dormancy stages in their life cycles, and its usefulness must be evaluated along gradients of hydroperiod and flood frequency, which may determine rates of microevolution in aquatic ecosystems. Many ecologically important organisms lack appropriate dormancy stages or occur in environments where propagules don't accumulate reliably in sediments.

Sexual reproduction during dormant propagule formation can complicate interpretation in some taxa. In organisms like copepods, ostracods, and dinoflagellates where dormant propagules are produced sexually, functional phenotypes selected by the environment could be lost during genetic recombination occurring during resting stage formation. This limits researchers' ability to link specific genotypes to phenotypes, though asexually reproducing organisms like many Daphnia clones avoid this problem.

Experimental design challenges also arise when implementing resurrection studies. Obtaining sufficient propagules from historical sediment layers can be laborious, and hatching success varies unpredictably. Establishing appropriate common garden conditions that reveal genetic differences while remaining ecologically relevant requires careful consideration. Studies conducted solely in greenhouse or laboratory conditions may miss important gene-by-environment interactions that occur in nature (Rauschkolb et al., 2023).

The interpretation of evolutionary change observed through resurrection ecology depends heavily on understanding environmental history. While paleolimnological records provide excellent environmental reconstructions for many lakes, linking specific environmental changes to observed evolutionary shifts requires care. Multiple environmental variables often change simultaneously - temperature, nutrients, pollutants, predator communities - making it difficult to identify which factors drove particular evolutionary responses.

Genetic drift, migration, and other non-adaptive processes can also contribute to observed changes between ancestors and descendants. Distinguishing adaptive evolution from neutral processes requires additional evidence, such as demonstrating fitness differences between ancestors and descendants or showing parallel evolution in replicate populations experiencing similar environmental changes.

Scaling represents another consideration. While resurrection studies excel at documenting microevolutionary change within populations, extrapolating these findings to broader patterns requires caution. Evolutionary rates and directions vary substantially among populations even within species, depending on local selective pressures, genetic variation, and demographic factors (Etterson et al., 2016).

Finally, practical and logistical constraints limit the scale and scope of many resurrection studies. Sediment coring, propagule extraction, dating, and resurrection experiments all require specialized expertise and considerable time and resources. Long-term studies spanning decades or more exceed typical funding cycles and individual career spans, requiring sustained institutional support.

Integration with Modern Technologies

Recent technological advances have dramatically expanded resurrection ecology's potential. Whole-genome sequencing now allows researchers to link phenotypic evolution observed in resurrected organisms to specific genetic changes. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) can associate phenotypes of resurrected organisms with single nucleotide polymorphisms across whole genomes, while transcriptomic approaches reveal gene expression patterns in resurrected clones (Miner et al., 2012; Orsini et al., 2012).

These genomic tools enable researchers to distinguish selection on standing genetic variation from selection on new mutations, quantify the strength of selection at individual loci, and identify candidate genes underlying adaptive traits. For instance, researchers studying resurrected Daphnia populations have identified genomic regions showing signatures of selection during documented environmental changes, linking specific gene variants to increased tolerance of warming temperatures or toxic algae.

Advances in ancient DNA techniques may eventually extend resurrection ecology's temporal reach. Even when propagules no longer remain viable, DNA extracted from sediment cores can reveal genetic changes over millennia, complementing traditional resurrection approaches. This "paleo-genomics" approach has begun illuminating population genetic changes in Daphnia and other organisms across postglacial timescales, though without the phenotypic data that live resurrected organisms provide.

Improved environmental monitoring and paleoecological techniques also enhance resurrection studies. High-resolution sediment records now reconstruct past environmental conditions with remarkable precision, including temperature, nutrient levels, pollutant concentrations, algal community composition, and even predator abundance. These detailed environmental reconstructions strengthen researchers' ability to link specific selective pressures to observed evolutionary changes.

Future Directions and Emerging Frontiers

As resurrection ecology matures, several exciting research directions are emerging. Multi-species resurrection studies promise insights into community-level evolutionary dynamics and eco-evolutionary feedbacks. By resurrecting multiple interacting species from the same sediment layers, researchers can examine how coevolution proceeds in nature and how evolutionary changes in one species cascade through food webs.

Climate change prediction represents an urgent application area. By quantifying evolutionary responses to recent warming, researchers can parameterize models that project future responses, improving predictions of which species and populations might adapt versus face extinction. Project Baseline will be particularly valuable as climate change accelerates, enabling comparisons across species with different generation times, geographic ranges, and life histories.

Evolutionary medicine applications involve studying resurrected microbes and their impacts on modern populations, examining pathogens like plague, anthrax, and smallpox preserved in permafrost or historical samples. Understanding how pathogen virulence and host resistance have evolved could inform disease management strategies.

The intersection of resurrection ecology with restoration ecology offers practical applications. Research may help recover biodiversity using resurrection ecology and restoration ecology approaches after both natural and anthropogenic environmental changes. Identifying pre-disturbance genotypes in sediment banks could guide restoration by revealing which genetic variants were historically present and potentially pre-adapted to restored conditions.

Extraterrestrial applications even merit consideration. Future long-term space exploration might benefit from resurrection ecology research on breaking dormancy for long-term transport of seeds or diapausing propagules. Understanding extreme dormancy mechanisms could prove valuable for establishing self-sustaining ecosystems during interplanetary colonization.

Methodological innovations will continue expanding the field's scope. Improved propagule storage techniques, potentially including cryopreservation, could extend viability indefinitely. Better statistical methods for correcting survival biases and extracting maximum information from limited samples will enhance analytical power. Integration with experimental evolution approaches, where researchers purposefully create propagule banks while simultaneously monitoring environmental changes, will provide even more rigorous tests of evolutionary theory.

Conclusion

Resurrection ecology has emerged as a transformative approach in evolutionary biology, offering unprecedented ability to observe and quantify evolution over ecologically relevant timescales. By exploiting the natural time capsules created by dormant life stages, researchers can directly compare ancestral and descendant organisms, eliminating many confounding factors that plague other approaches to studying evolution.

The field has already yielded fundamental insights into evolutionary processes, documenting rapid adaptation to climate change, pollution, eutrophication, and altered species interactions. It has provided empirical support for key evolutionary theories, including Red Queen dynamics and the genetic basis of adaptation. Beyond pure science, resurrection ecology offers practical applications for conservation, restoration, agriculture, and predicting biological responses to ongoing global change.

Yet significant challenges remain. Methodological limitations around propagule viability, survival bias, and taxonomic constraints mean resurrection ecology complements rather than replaces other approaches to studying evolution. Careful experimental design, rigorous statistical analysis, and integration with environmental history and modern genomic tools are essential for realizing the approach's full potential.

Looking forward, resurrection ecology stands poised to contribute even more substantially to our understanding of life's responses to environmental change. As archived collections like Project Baseline mature and technology continues advancing, researchers decades hence will have unprecedented resources for examining evolution across space, time, and environmental gradients. In an era when human activities drive environmental change at rates unprecedented in Earth's history, the ability to look backward through biological time capsules may prove essential for looking forward toward a sustainable future.

The organisms sleeping in sediments and seed banks represent more than scientific curiosities - they are witnesses to our changing world, carrying in their genes the stories of how life responds to transformation. By learning to read these stories through resurrection ecology, we gain not just historical perspective but potentially the wisdom to guide conservation and management in an uncertain future. As we continue to alter Earth's environments, understanding how evolution has responded to past changes becomes ever more critical for predicting and perhaps mitigating the consequences of changes to come.

References

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Burge, D. R. L., Edlund, M. B., & Frisch, D. (2018). Paleolimnology and resurrection ecology: The future of reconstructing the past. Evolutionary Applications, 11(1), 42-59.

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Cousyn, C., De Meester, L., Colbourne, J. K., Brendonck, L., Verschuren, D., & Volckaert, F. (2001). Rapid, local adaptation of zooplankton behavior to changes in predation pressure in the absence of neutral genetic changes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98, 6256-6260.

Decaestecker, E., Gaba, S., Raeymaekers, J. A. M., Stoks, R., Van Kerckhoven, L., Ebert, D., & De Meester, L. (2007). Host-parasite 'Red Queen' dynamics archived in pond sediment. Nature, 450, 870-873.

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Franks, S. J., Hamann, E., & Weis, A. E. (2018). Using the resurrection approach to understand contemporary evolution in changing environments. Evolutionary Applications, 11(1), 17-28.

Frisch, D., Morton, P. M., Chowdhury, P. R., Culver, B. W., Colbourne, J. K., Weider, L. J., & Jeyasingh, P. D. (2014). A millennial-scale chronicle of evolutionary responses to cultural eutrophication in Daphnia. Ecology Letters, 17, 360-368.

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Härnström, K., Ellegaard, M., Andersen, T. J., & Godhe, A. (2011). Hundred years of genetic structure in a sediment revived diatom population. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108, 4252-4257.

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Kerfoot, W. C., & Weider, L. J. (2004). Experimental paleoecology (resurrection ecology): Chasing Van Valen's Red Queen hypothesis. Limnology and Oceanography, 49, 1300-1316.

Lenormand, T., Nougué, O., Jabbour-Zahab, R., Arnaud, F., Dezileau, L., Chevin, L. M., & Sánchez, M. I. (2018). Resurrection ecology in Artemia. Evolutionary Applications, 11(1), 76-87.

Miner, B. E., De Meester, L., Pfrender, M. E., Lampert, W., & Hairston, N. G., Jr. (2012). Linking genes to communities and ecosystems: Daphnia as an ecogenomic model. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 279, 1873-1882.

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Rauschkolb, R., Scheepens, J. F., Bossdorf, O., Ensslin, A., & Hensen, I. (2023). Combining the resurrection approach with transplant experiments to investigate adaptation of plant populations to environmental change. Basic and Applied Ecology, 66, 41-53.

Weider, L. J., Lampert, W., Wessels, M., Colbourne, J. K., & Limburg, P. (1997). Long-term genetic shifts in a microcrustacean egg bank associated with anthropogenic changes in the Lake Constance ecosystem. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 264, 1613-1618.

Weis, A. E. (2018). Detecting the "invisible fraction" bias in resurrection experiments. Evolutionary Applications, 11(1), 88-95.

Insights, Analysis, and Developments

Author Credentials: Ian is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Disabled World, a leading resource for news and information on disability issues. With a global perspective shaped by years of travel and lived experience, Ian is a committed proponent of the Social Model of Disability-a transformative framework developed by disabled activists in the 1970s that emphasizes dismantling societal barriers rather than focusing solely on individual impairments. His work reflects a deep commitment to disability rights, accessibility, and social inclusion. To learn more about Ian's background, expertise, and accomplishments, visit his full biography.