Countering Charles Darwin’s view that evolution occurs gradually, UC Irvine scientists have discovered that plants with short life cycles can evolutionally adapt in just a few years to climate change. This finding suggests that quick-growing plants such as weeds may cope better with global warming than slower-growing plants such as Redwood trees – a phenomenon that could lead to future changes in the Earth’s plant life. “Some species evolve fast enough to keep up with environmental change,” said Arthur Weis, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. “Global warming may increase the pace of this change so that certain species may have difficulty keeping up. Plants with longer life cycles will have fewer generations over which to evolve.”