Every species seems beautifully adapted to its way of life, so why do species ever change? Enrico Coen gives the 2017 JSB Haldane Lecture. Subscribe for regular science videos: http://bit.ly/RiSubscRibe Watch the Q&A here: https://youtu.be/2qj89q3k7U0 Enrico Coen discusses how studying the snapdragon flower and its wild relatives is providing fresh answers to questions about adaptive change and population transformation. He will show how genes and environment interact to drive populations to explore new evolutionary paths. Enrico Coen is a biologist who studies the mechanisms used by plants to create complex and varied flower structures. Enrico combines molecular, genetic and imaging studies with population and ecological models and computational analysis to understand flower development. This talk was recorded in the Royal Institution on 21 November 2017. The Ri is on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ri_science and Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/royalinstitution and Tumblr: http://ri-science.tumblr.com/ Our editorial policy: http://www.rigb.org/home/editorial-policy Subscribe for the latest science videos: http://bit.ly/RiNewsletter