DAVID: In relation to Shapiro's work a new study shows how bacteria can appear to control adaptation to a change in nutrients:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-it-comes-to-evolution-microbes-have-to-...

QUOTE: "To survive hostile environments, an organism often has to acquire new traits.”

dhw: And yet you keep trying to tell us that survivability plays no role in evolution. Bacteria remain bacteria, but maybe other organisms acquire major new traits for the same reason, and duly become new species.

Not that survivability 'plays no role' but a much smaller role than implied by 'survival of the fitest.