Digest: Linking life-history evolution and substitution rates in extreme environments

Weiss and Berv (2025) proposed and tested a resource longevity hypothesis on marine invertebrates in deep-sea ecosystems. They found that organisms in ephemeral environments have faster substitution rates, whereas those in stable environments have slower rates. The study confirmed that evolutionary rates differ across habitat types, a pattern the authors attributed to habitat longevity. Notably, there was no significant association between species body size and evolutionary rate. This suggests that resource variability drives evolutionary rates in these extreme environments.