ArticleNature communications2019
The coevolution of lifespan and reversible plasticity.
Article in Nature communications, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers.
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Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed.
- Male conspicuous coloration covaries with aggression but not with exploration in the short-lived annual fish Nothobranchius guentheri.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- The evolutionary consequences of behavioural plasticity.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Network stress: a wiring diagram of whole stress genes.Horticulture research · 2026Article
- The evolution of reversible plasticity in stable environments.Evolution letters · 2025Article
- Impacts of limits to adaptation on population and community persistence in a changing environment.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Constructing stability: optimal learning in noisy ecological niches.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Plant environmental memory: implications, mechanisms and opportunities for plant scientists and beyond.AoB PLANTS · 2023Review
- Condition dependence and the paradox of missing plasticity costs.Evolution letters · 2023Article
- Experimental evolution of environmental tolerance, acclimation, and physiological plasticity in a randomly fluctuating environment.Evolution letters · 2022Article
- Decadal migration phenology of a long-lived Arctic icon keeps pace with climate change.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Evolution of sex allocation plasticity in a hermaphroditic flatworm genus.Journal of evolutionary biology · 2022Article
- Sensitive periods, but not critical periods, evolve in a fluctuating environment: a model of incremental development.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Can impulsivity evolve in response to childhood environmental harshness?Evolutionary human sciences · 2022Article
- An eco-evo-devo genetic network model of stress response.Horticulture research · 2022Article
- Evolution of natural lifespan variation and molecular strategies of extended lifespan in yeast.eLife · 2021Article
- Comparative Analysis of Mammal Genomes Unveils Key Genomic Variability for Human Life Span.Molecular biology and evolution · 2021Article
- Reversible plasticity in brain size, behaviour and physiology characterizes caste transitions in a socially flexible ant (Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Reduced phenotypic plasticity evolves in less predictable environments.Ecology letters · 2020Article
- Environmental variation mediates the evolution of anticipatory parental effects.Evolution letters · 2020Article
- Fluctuations in lifetime selection in an autocorrelated environment.Theoretical population biology · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Reversible phenotypic plasticity, the ability to change one's phenotype repeatedly throughout life, can be selected for in environments that do not stay constant throughout an individual's lifetime. It might also mitigate senescence, as the mismatch between the environment and a non-plastic individual's traits is likely to increase as time passes. To understand why reversible plasticity may covary with lifespan, studies tend to assume unidirectional causality: plasticity evolves under suitable rates of environmental variation with respect to life history. Here we show that if lifespan also evolves in response to plasticity, then long life is not merely a context that sets the stage for lifelong plasticity. Instead, the causality is bidirectional because plasticity itself can select for longevity. Highly autocorrelated environmental fluctuations predict low investment in reversible plasticity and a phenotype that is poorly matched to the environment at older ages. Such environments select for high reproductive effort and short lifespans.
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