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Visualizing Visual Adaptation
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Environmental predictability drives different routes to adaptation.

Anna C Vinton1,2,3,4, Ben Ibbott1, Jinlin Chen1,5

  • 1Department of Biology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.

Evolution Letters
|April 6, 2026
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Environmental predictability shapes species

Keywords:
Drosophila melanogasterenvironmental predictabilitylife-history evolutionphenotypic plasticitytemperature variationthermal adaptation

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Area of Science:

  • Evolutionary biology
  • Ecology
  • Environmental science

Background:

  • Climate change is altering Earth's thermal environments, impacting species' adaptive capacities.
  • Understanding how environmental predictability influences species' reliance on phenotypic plasticity versus evolutionary adaptation is crucial.
  • Limited experimental data exists to differentiate plastic and evolutionary responses to varying environmental predictability.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To experimentally compare adaptive responses of *Drosophila melanogaster* to predictable versus unpredictable thermal variation.
  • To disentangle plastic and evolutionary adaptive changes in response to different thermal regimes.
  • To investigate the role of environmental predictability in shaping life-history evolution.

Main Methods:

  • Populations of *Drosophila melanogaster* were evolved for 11 generations under constant, predictable, or random thermal fluctuations.
  • A plasticity assay was used to assess total phenotypic responses by testing flies directly from their evolved environments.
  • A common garden assay, involving two generations of standardized rearing, was employed to isolate genetic changes.

Main Results:

  • Environmental predictability fundamentally shaped divergent life-history strategies, revealed by comparing the two assays.
  • Populations from predictable environments evolved enhanced survival, evident only in the common garden assay.
  • Populations from unpredictable environments exhibited reduced survival and consistently lower fecundity, with reproductive costs masked in the plasticity assay.

Conclusions:

  • Predictable environmental variation favors evolution of stress-resistant longevity, while unpredictable variation imposes immediate survival costs and reproductive constraints.
  • Environmental predictability, not just variability, determines the target and mechanism of adaptation, challenging the notion that variation uniformly selects for plasticity.
  • Findings provide critical insights for predicting species persistence and informing conservation strategies under increasing climate change-induced environmental unpredictability.