Abstract
Lizards that live in the Greater Antilles exploit a large range of skeletal variations to adapt to similar habitats, in defiance of the theory of plasticity-led evolution.
Highlights
Related research article Feiner N, Jackson IS, Munch KL, Radersma R, Uller T. 2020
The effects of mechanical stress on the bones of baby animals might not come to mind when you think about evolution, but recent theoretical work suggests that there might be a connection between the two
Developmental plasticity refers to how embryonic development responds to the environment: in particular, it refers to the way that an individual genotype interacts with its environment during development to produce a particular phenotype
Summary
Related research article Feiner N, Jackson IS, Munch KL, Radersma R, Uller T. 2020. Plasticity and evolutionary convergence in the locomotor skeleton of Greater Antillean Anolis lizards. eLife 9:e57468. doi: 10.7554/ eLife.57468. The effects of mechanical stress on the bones of baby animals might not come to mind when you think about evolution, but recent theoretical work suggests that there might be a connection between the two. Environmental stresses can lead to small variations amongst developing embryos that natural selection can act upon, and recent research suggests that the way that variations are produced during development may guide the evolutionary paths that lineages follow (Brun-Usan et al, 2020; Uller et al, 2020; Levis and Pfennig, 2016; Moczek et al, 2011).
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