Humans, Nature and Evolution: Our internventions and "mother nature's" reaction

Evolution has been recognized and proven - since Darwin's time - to drive species selection and survivability.

Many constants may lead living species to thrive and continue being present in our lives or vanish from the face of our planet.

The main characteristic is the acquisition of new features that lead to greater fitness in the environment.

For example, someone might say that such a paradigm is the ability of bacteria to acquire mutations in order to survive in harsh conditions. Those mutations occur due to the presence of antibiotics or strong poisonous chemicals, in the environment, directing bacteria's evolution into alternative metabolic pathways or genetic changes that make them able to withstand ( antibiotics ) or even utilize ( strong chemicals ) for their benefit, coming out as winners from their "battle" with those harsh environmental conditions.

But, sometimes, it is we - the human species - who affect those evolutionary trends.

The plant Fritillaria delavayi, known for its usage in Chinese medicine practices, has evolved for it to become less visible to humans.

It is spectacular that this plant matched the environment on the rocky slopes of China's Hengduan mountains, the area specifically where it is being heavily harvested.

The level of commercial harvesting has been correlated to much stronger selection pressure, an indication that this kind of pressure - among other types - gave the "edge" to the plant and supported its color change.

Both humans and nature interact and form new situations that create new evolutionary phenomena.

Remains to see on how many other occasions this happens and how dramatic is the effect!

Do you have any knowledge of other species that were affected by our own "hand", and the way we meddled with the environment?