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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Aug 27, 2025

A Proboscis Extension Response Protocol for Investigating Behavioral Plasticity in Insects: Application to Basic, Biomedical, and Agricultural Research

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Published on: September 8, 2014

Plasticity's role in adaptive evolution depends on environmental change components.

Anna C Vinton¹, Samuel J L Gascoigne¹, Irem Sepil¹

¹Department of Biology, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3SZ, UK.

Trends in Ecology & Evolution

|September 24, 2022

Summary

Understanding phenotypic plasticity and adaptive evolution is key to predicting extinction risks. Considering environmental change rate, variance, and autocorrelation offers a unifying framework for how plasticity impacts adaptive evolution and population viability.

Keywords:

climate change environmental change environmental stochasticity environmental variation evolution plasticity

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Area of Science:

Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Conservation Biology

Background:

Forecasting extinction risks requires integrating phenotypic plasticity and adaptive evolution.
Current evidence on plasticity's role in adaptation to changing environments is contradictory.

Purpose of the Study:

To propose a unifying framework for understanding how phenotypic plasticity influences adaptive evolution.
To develop expectations for the interplay between plasticity and adaptive evolution in natural populations facing environmental change.

Main Methods:

Developing a theoretical framework based on three key environmental change components: rate of change, variance, and temporal autocorrelation.
Analyzing how these components distinctly affect ecological and evolutionary processes.

Main Results:

The proposed framework suggests that environmental change rate, variance, and autocorrelation differentially impact population viability.
Explicit consideration of these components clarifies the role of plasticity in adaptive responses.

Conclusions:

The framework provides a novel approach to predict population viability under climate change and human impacts.
This integrative understanding is crucial for effective conservation strategies in a changing world.