Over the past 30 years, Swiss barn owls have undergone rapid natural selection, becoming more reddish-brown and heavily spotted across roughly ten generations. Researchers from the University of Lausanne sequenced the complete genomes of more than 3,000 barn owls to track genetic variants linked to plumage, confirming that random chance alone could not explain the shifts. The study highlights the role of the MC1R gene and sex chromosome regions in pigmentation, though the direct driver may be linked to stress responses, aggression, or changing food availability like vole populations rather than color itself. This long-term research demonstrates that wild species can undergo detectable genetic evolution over remarkably short periods. Scientists emphasize that such rapid adaptation capacity offers an encouraging sign for wildlife coping with ongoing environmental and climate changes. The interdisciplinary research combined decades of field monitoring with high-throughput genomics to document evolution in a natural setting. Future research plans involve utilizing computer analysis of photographs to measure coloration precisely and reconstructing plumage traits of young owls to evaluate survival rates. This methodological approach sets a new benchmark for studying evolutionary biology in wild animal populations.
