"has been adaptive" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use the phrase "has been adaptive" when you want to communicate that something has been able to change and adjust to its environment over time. For example, "The species of fish living in this river has been adaptive, changing its behavior and features to survive in the changing water conditions."
Their simplicity has been adaptive, and sponges have remained important in benthic marine habitats since their origin.
Re "A Critic Takes On the Logic of Female Orgasm" (May 17): Although I'm not a biologist, I propose a common-sense theory that explains why female orgasm has been adaptive in our species.
The observation that radiation in the Cistus salviifolius lineage has been accompanied by the emergence of divergent leaf traits (such as shape, pubescence and labdanum secretion) in different environments suggets that radiation in the group has been adaptive.
To the extent that there has been adaptive evolution of the chitin-binding Consensus, it has probably been more prevalent in the RR-1 clade.
It is not possible to distinguish whether there has been adaptive selection against the activity of these genes in Paratyphi A and Typhi, or simply shared tolerance for their inactivation.
Consequently, if the radiation of a lineage has been adaptive, then the diversifications of both the lineage and the phenotype are expected to display similar patterns, which would be driven by changes in niche filling over time (e.g., [ 2, 14]).
The Gormans, too, argue that ways of thinking that now seem self-destructive must at some point have been adaptive.
Our results suggest that subtle changes in L-cone opsin wavelength absorption may have been adaptive during human evolution.
More than that, it is often beneficial for humans to work together with other humans, which means that it would have been adaptive to evaluate the niceness and nastiness of other individuals.
Code points out that "3,000 years ago, the mother-child stress connection might have been adaptive, but now we're seeing totally different types of maternal stress.
