Here’s a thought: in an environment like the Galapagos, where finches adapt to changing conditions—beaks growing longer or shorter, thinner or wider—they eventually converge back, moving from many species to just a few.
This “fission-fusion” dynamic, as it is called, is not evolutionary. Adaptation transitions into evolution when the creature doesn’t merely adjust to the changing environment but evolves with it. In other words, both the environment and the animal adapt together. That, perhaps, the essence of evolution is to be found in qualiadelic relationships.