The word the author seems to look for is "evolvability" [0]. > Evolvability is defined as the capacity of a system for adaptive evolution. Evolvability is the

The word the author seems to look for is "evolvability" [0]. > Evolvability is defined as the capacity of a system for adaptive evolution. Evolvability is the ability of a population of organisms to not merely generate genetic diversity, but to generate adaptive genetic diversity, and thereby evolve through natural selection. In changing environment organisms have to be able to quickly adapt. You can compare organisms like Greenland Shark with lifespans of up to 400 years with a common mouse. Mice will go trough some 100-1000 generations in lifespan of a Greenland Shark. Which one is more likely to adapt to changes in the environment induced by humans and which will go extinct? Anthropocene extinction event will eliminate a lot of life forms with long lifespans, many are already gone, and previous extinction events probably did it too. BTW - This is a falsifiable hypothesis in a fairly simple simulation. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolvability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolvability