Author: Christopher Blake, PhD Student, Monash University

Dying coral reefs, rainforests transforming into savannas, grasslands turning into deserts – these are ecosystem “tipping points”, boundary lines we’re desperate not to cross. In dynamic systems filled with life, these critical thresholds aren’t set in stone. Since organisms can evolve, the tipping points within these ecosystems might evolve too. Most of us think of evolution as a glacial process, too slow to witness in a single lifetime. But evolution, especially in the microbial world, can happen very quickly. Consider antibiotic-resistant bacteria that emerge within years, or the COVID-causing virus evolving new variants in mere months. When the conditions are…