Evolution of plasticity and character displacement in a fluctuating environment

Species that compete for the same resource may undergo ecological character displacement (CD), where the phenotype of each species evolves to deviate from its optimum in the absence of competition. As natural habitats are rarely static, interspecific competition is likely to occur in environments that fluctuate over time. Such environmental fluctuations can in turn cause the evolution of phenotypic plasticity for traits mediating the competition. However, the interplay of environmental fluctuations, evolution of plasticity, and character displacement, has been little investigated. We use a quantitative genetic model to study theoretically how a randomly fluctuating environment and evolution of plasticity influence the outcome of ecological CD between 2 competing species. We show that environmental fluctuations make the conditions for CD more stringent, requiring stronger competitive selection relative to stabilizing selection. This occurs because environmental fluctuations reduce the average population size and thereby competition intensity. Evolving plasticity can restore CD by buffering the impact of environmental fluctuations through phenotypic tracking, to a degree that depends on environmental predictability. Somewhat paradoxically, competition that favors phenotypic divergence among species can cause convergence in plasticity, when this reduces the load caused by fluctuations in phenotypic divergence. Our results shed light on how competition and plasticity influence the evolution of the fundamental niche in a fluctuating environment.