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The processes of star formation and feedback, regulating the cycle of matterbetween gas and stars on the scales of giant molecular clouds (GMCs;$\sim$100pc), play a major role in governing galaxy evolution. Measuring thetime-scales of GMC evolution is important to identify and characterise thespecific physical mechanisms that drive this transition. By applying a robuststatistical method to high-resolution CO and narrow-band H$\alpha$ imaging fromthe PHANGS survey, we systematically measure the evolutionary timeline frommolecular clouds to exposed young stellar regions on GMC scales, across thediscs of an unprecedented sample of 54 star-forming main-sequence galaxies(excluding their unresolved centres). We find that clouds live for about$1{-}3$ GMC turbulence crossing times ($5{-}30$Myr) and are efficientlydispersed by stellar feedback within $1{-}5$Myr once the star-forming regionbecomes partially exposed, resulting in integrated star formation efficienciesof $1{-}8$%. These ranges reflect physical galaxy-to-galaxy variation. In orderto evaluate whether galactic environment influences GMC evolution, we correlateour measurements with average properties of the GMCs and their local galacticenvironment. We find several strong correlations that can be physicallyunderstood, revealing a quantitative link between galactic-scale environmentalproperties and the small-scale GMC evolution. Notably, the measured CO-visiblecloud lifetimes become shorter with decreasing galaxy mass, mostly due to theincreasing presence of CO-dark molecular gas in such environment. Our resultsrepresent a first step towards a comprehensive picture of cloud assembly anddispersal, which requires further extension and refinement with tracers of theatomic gas, dust, and deeply-embedded stars.

Environmental dependence of the molecular cloud lifecycle in 54 main sequence galaxies