Phenotypic and Developmental Plasticity in Plants

Abstract

Abstract Plants have a remarkable ability to alter their development in response to myriad environmental cues or stress. This phenotypic plasticity allows them to continually adapt to their local environment, a necessity for plants as sessile organisms. A host of environmental cues can be interpreted by plants, including light, temperature and nutrients, and these inputs are integrated and translated into a range of developmental outputs from shoot elongation, regulation of root gravitropism, altered flowering time, growth cessation of leaves, and timing of germination. This plasticity enables growth optimisation for the local environment, allows range expansion into hetergeneous habitats, and may provide an advantage as the changing climate affects growth conditions around the globe. Using model organisms such as Arabidopsis , molecular mechanisms for plastic growth responses are becoming more defined. Studies of growth and plasticity in less‐characterized species could expand our knowledge of the range of plasticity present in nature. Key Concepts: Multiple environmental signals are integrated to regulate plant development. Plasticity gives plants the ability to optimise growth in varied environments. Developmental plasticity comes from the meristem, which continuously produces organs throughout the plant life cycle. Environmental cues can lead to changes in mRNA and protein abundance or activity, or they can be stored as epigenetic changes. Roots and shoots respond to different environmental conditions but employ similar cellular processes. Plants’ ability to optimise growth for a local environment may provide an advantage as habitats are altered by the changing climate.