Abstract
Phenotypic plasticity is predicted to evolve in more variable environments, conferring an advantage on individual lifetime fitness. It is less clear what the potential consequences of that plasticity will have on ecological population dynamics. Here, we use an invertebrate model system to examine the effects of environmental variation (resource availability) on the evolution of phenotypic plasticity in two life history traits—age and size at maturation—in long‐running, experimental density‐dependent environments. Specifically, we then explore the feedback from evolution of life history plasticity to subsequent ecological dynamics in novel conditions. Plasticity in both traits initially declined in all microcosm environments, but then evolved increased plasticity for age‐at‐maturation, significantly so in more environmentally variable environments. We also demonstrate how plasticity affects ecological dynamics by creating founder populations of different plastic phenotypes into new microcosms that had either familiar or novel environments. Populations originating from periodically variable environments that had evolved greatest plasticity had lowest variability in population size when introduced to novel environments than those from constant or random environments. This suggests that while plasticity may be costly it can confer benefits by reducing the likelihood that offspring will experience low survival through competitive bottlenecks in variable environments. In this study, we demonstrate how plasticity evolves in response to environmental variation and can alter population dynamics—demonstrating an eco‐evolutionary feedback loop in a complex animal moderated by plasticity in growth.
Highlights
Phenotypic plasticity is the capacity of a given genotype to express different phenotypes according to the environments they experience (Fusco & Minelli, 2010; Price et al, 2003)
We might expect that a population exposed to variable selection pressures in variable environments would result in greater plasticity, versus a population exposed to a constant environmental selection pressure where plasticity may erode; especially, if it is costly to maintain (DeWitt et al, 1998; Sereda et al, 2014; see Figure 1 for details)
By reintroducing mites from given background environments to novel environments, we have shown the role that plasticity can play in eco-evolutionary dynamics
Summary
Phenotypic plasticity (hereafter plasticity) is the capacity of a given genotype to express different phenotypes according to the environments they experience (Fusco & Minelli, 2010; Price et al, 2003). It is well reported that environmental variability should select for plasticity (Chevin & Lande, 2015) This is based on the premise that the ability to be plastic for a given trait may improve fitness in the face of environmental change (Fox et al, 2019; Gratani, 2014). Both theoretical (Murren et al, 2015) and empirical work (Furness et al, 2015) highlight the importance of the predictability of environmental cues for promoting the evolution of plasticity. We can predict that plasticity should evolve in predictably variable environments, erode in constant environments, and erode or be stationary in randomly variable environments (Chevin & Lande, 2015; Leung et al, 2020; Manenti et al, 2015)
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