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Re: "Darwinian Time," 1 If the environment is relatively static, attributes that allow the organism to out-compete should slowly become more prevalent. The less complicated organism will evolve more rapidly. When we have large environmental perturbations, however, then the diversity within the existing population would seem to be the controlling factor; in a natural population the genetic variation to tolerate the heat-shock protein, for instance, would have allowed the organism to continue. Whether a more complex organism has the genetic diversity to survive a large environmental event is obviously open to speculation.