Observations of evolution in the dust-to-metal ratio allow us to constrain the dominant dust processing mechanisms .
In this work , we present a study of the dust-to-metal and dust-to-gas ratios in a sub-sample of \sim 500 DustPedia galaxies .
Using literature and MUSE emission line fluxes , we derived gas-phase metallicities ( oxygen abundances ) for over 10000 individual regions and determine characteristic metallicities for each galaxy .
We study how the relative dust , gas , and metal contents of galaxies evolve by using metallicity and gas fraction as proxies for evolutionary state .
The global oxygen abundance and nitrogen-to-oxygen ratio are found to increase monotonically as galaxies evolve .
Additionally , unevolved galaxies ( gas fraction > 60 \% , metallicity 12 + log ( O / H ) < 8.2 ) have dust-to-metal ratios that are about a factor of 2.1 lower ( a factor of six lower for galaxies with gas fraction > 80 \% ) than the typical dust-to-metal ratio ( M _ { d } / M _ { Z } \sim 0.214 ) for more evolved sources .
However , for high gas fractions , the scatter is larger due to larger observational uncertainties as well as a potential dependence of the dust grain growth timescale and supernova dust yield on local conditions and star formation histories .
We find chemical evolution models with a strong contribution from dust grain growth describe these observations reasonably well .
The dust-to-metal ratio is also found to be lower for low stellar masses and high specific star formation rates ( with the exception of some sources undergoing a starburst ) .
Finally , the metallicity gradient correlates weakly with the H i -to-stellar mass ratio , the effective radius and the dust-to-stellar mass ratio , but not with stellar mass .