Evolutionary change is remarkably time-independent across scales

Apparent time-scaling of evolutionary rates presents an evolutionary dilemma. Rates of molecular, phenotypic, and lineage diversification typically scale negatively with time interval, raising questions about the processes driving this seemingly general pattern. Here we show that much apparent temporal scaling is an inevitable outcome of plotting a ratio against its denominator. Highly unlikely relationships between timescale and accumulated evolutionary change are required to produce anything other than negative relationships between rate and time. Rate-time scaling relationships reflect unscaled magnitudes of evolution that are largely unrelated to time, consistent with uniformitarianism and reframing the widely-held view of disparate pace of micro- and macroevolution. Time-independence of evolutionary change raises new questions about the factors that generate temporal consistency in evolution. Significance Statement A longstanding finding across molecular, phenotypic, phylogenetic and fossil data is that evolutionary rates depend strongly on the timescale over which evolution is measured. This seemingly general pattern has stimulated many hypotheses of some shared general features of the underlying processes that shape evolutionary rates. Here, we show that evolutionary rates will inevitably correlate negatively with time interval, even if evolutionary processes are time-independent. While the statistical effects behind this pattern are known, our new analyses demonstrates that evolutionary rate-time relationships are nearly inevitable. Empirical data suggest variable evolutionary rates across time, but no time-dependency or systematic difference between micro- and macroevolutionary scales. Thus, evolutionary change is largely uniform and independent of timescale. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.