That's the wrong question to ask.

Species do not use strategies to evolve in a certain direction. They don't have a goal. There is variation among genotypes of a species, and some survive, whereas other don't. The end-result may LOOK as if the species developed a strategy, but that is not how the process took place.

I agree with Hans, but still, among colleagues following me here there is Dr. Vera Pozolotina, she is an expert in this field (not exactly Chernobyl, but generally the effect of radiation of organizms), so you can try to look at her publication, or contact her personally

Actually, I would be curious to see if there were any effects in the Chernobyl area. The doses in the contaminated area arround Chernobyl are not high enough to support such an evolution. If you compare those doses with areas like Ramsar in Iran, you will see that in most of the area arround Chernobyl the doses are lower than in Ramsar and there are no strange species there although in Ramsar we speak about the natural background, so there was infinitely much more time for evolution than in the Chernobyl area.

My two-cents to add is that apparently the catfish in the Chernobyl cooling channels show stunted growth compared to individuals found in other areas. I believe they are around ~50% of the body size of non-radiated populations when individuals are the same age, and this is not related to a lack of food sources.

Interesting. Is there a complete statistical study showing this? Did anybody do a correlation between the size and the dose? Can you please point me to such a study?

We've recently published a paper dealing with this question on soil animals. Please see attachment

There was a recent paper published by Galvan et al in Functional Ecology that demonstrates that some of the birds of Chernobyl, at least the ones that are currently surviving, may have adapted to the radiation via increased allocation of antioxidants (e.g. GSH) towards defense against the ROS generated by radiation rather than coloration. The citation is given below. It may be available on Researhgate or Academia, but if not, contact one of the authors for a copy.

There was also a recent review of naturally "hot" spots and their impacts on natural populations (including humans). There are several examples of evolved adaptations presented in this review/meta analysis. If this mater is not available here, I suspect they both available from the author's Chernobyl website.

Galvan, I., A. Bonisoli-Alquati, S. Jenkinson, G. Ghanem, K. Wakamatsu, T.A. Mousseau, A.P. Møller. 2014. Chronic exposure to low-dose radiation at Chernobyl favors adaptation to oxidative stress in birds. Functional Ecology, in press.

Møller, A.P. and T.A. Mousseau. 2013. The effects of natural variation in background radioactivity on humans, animals and other organisms. Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 88:226-254.

Thank you both!

There is no strategy, it is better to say that there are some special plants just could survive under that condition because of their ability to exclude the heavy metal or they could be as accumulators and involving in a process called phytoremediation.

There are a few research groups that study the ecology of animals in Chenobyl, especially looking at birds and clutch sizes if I remember correctly; but I dont remember who it was that studies it.

The catfish size difference issue is anecdotal from some fishing TV programs..you can youtube them "River Monsters Chenobyl" should do it.

A quick google search also produced these:

http://nuclearfreeplanet.org/chernobyl-research-initiative-publications.html

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/etc.5620150706/abstract

http://www.bioline.org.br/request?zr06097

http://cricket.biol.sc.edu/chernobyl/papers/Moller-Mousseau-TREE-2006-PR1.pdf

http://chernobyl.info/Portals/0/Docs/en/pdf_en/EnvRep_Pub1239_web.pdf

I think that is not correct to talk about the strategy used by living organisms around Chernobyl to adapt to the negative effects of the radiation present in the site, but on the mechanism that the living organisms have to mutate with the aim of surviving to the impact of the high level radiation received and that still are receiving. I visited the site two-three months after the accident and I have the possibility to see the impact of the radiation received by the trees around the plant and on certain types of animals and plants in the surrounded of the city near the Chernobyl power plant that survived the accident.

Probably could be interesting for your paper this work "Application of molluscs for radioecological monitoring of the chernobyl outburst".

Over the past years, we have studied the health effects of exposure to high levels of natural radiation in high background radiation areas of Ramsar. Our first paper on the existence of adaptive response in the residents of Ramsar has been cited more than 110 times in the Web of Science.

"Very high background radiation areas of Ramsar, Iran: preliminary biological studies"

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11769138

However, we have recently shown that short term exposure to extremely high levels of natural gamma radiation (up to 196 times higher than the normal background) does not lead to induction of survival adaptive response in laboratory animals.

"Short-term exposure to high levels of natural external gamma radiation does not induce survival adaptive response"

http://ijrr.com/browse.php?a_code=A-10-1-439&slc_lang=en&sid=1&sw=mortazavi