Digest: Plastic responses to warmer climates: A semi-natural experiment on lizard populations.

Abstract

Determining whether a phenotypic change is the result of microevolution or plasticity can be challenging. Bestion et al. (2023) investigate the contributions of plasticity (both intragenerational and intergenerational) and selection to phenotypic changes in common lizards (Zootoca vivipara) in response to a warmer climate that mirrors projections for 2080. Their results suggest that plasticity plays a more important role than selection in governing many of the phenotypic responses to temperature change.