SynthesisProceedings. Biological sciences2019
Adaptive phenotypic plasticity for life-history and less fitness-related traits.
Synthesis in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
32 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Adaptive phenotypic plasticity for life-history and less fitness-related traits.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2019Pooled it
- Sparse evidence for selection on phenotypic plasticity in response to temperature.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2019Pooled it
- Interactive Effects of Genes and Environment on Vegetative and Reproductive Tradeoffs of Leaf Size Mutants.Plant-environment interactions (Hoboken, N.J.) · 2026Article
- Increased adaptive potential in novel environments can be predicted from genetic variance in development time expressed in native environments.Evolution letters · 2026Article
- Phenotypic Plasticity inEcology and evolution · 2026Article
- Photoreceptor control ofProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Variations in Seed and Fruit Traits of the Rare and Endangered Chinese PlantEcology and evolution · 2026Article
- Article
- Variation in temperature but not diet determines the stability of latitudinal clines in tolerance traits and their plasticity.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- How Air Temperature and Solar Radiation Impact Life History Traits in a Wild Insect.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Life history in Caenorhabditis elegans: from molecular genetics to evolutionary ecology.Genetics · 2024Review
- Early Life History Divergence Mediates Elevational Adaptation in a Perennial Alpine Plant.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Experience shapes wild boar spatial response to drive hunts.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Environmental effects on genetic variance are likely to constrain adaptation in novel environments.Evolution letters · 2024Article
- Phenotypic plasticity in the sailfin molly III: Geographic variation in reaction norms of growth and maturation to temperature and salinity.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Intergenerational plasticity aligns with temperature-dependent selection on offspring metabolic rates.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Altitudinal variation in reproductive investment among Gryllus campestris populations.PloS one · 2024Article
- A multidimensional framework to quantify the effects of urbanization on avian breeding fitness.Ecology and evolution · 2023Review
- Juvenile socio-sexual experience determines lifetime sperm expenditure and adult survival in a polygamous moth, Ephestia kuehniella.Insect science · 2023Review
- Within-population variation in body size plasticity in response to combined nutritional and thermal stress is partially independent from variation in development time.Journal of evolutionary biology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Organisms are faced with variable environments and one of the most common solutions to cope with such variability is phenotypic plasticity, a modification of the phenotype to the environment. These modifications are commonly modelled in evolutionary theories as adaptive, influencing ecological and evolutionary processes. If plasticity is adaptive, we would predict that the closer to fitness a trait is, the less plastic it would be. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a meta-analysis of 213 studies and measured the plasticity of each reported trait as a coefficient of variation. Traits were categorized as closer to fitness-life-history traits including reproduction and survival related traits, and farther from fitness-non-life-history traits including traits related to development, metabolism and physiology, morphology and behaviour. Our results showed, unexpectedly, that although traits differed in their amounts of plasticity, trait plasticity was not related to its proximity to fitness. These findings were independent of taxonomic groups or environmental types assessed. We caution against general expectations that plasticity is adaptive, as assumed by many models of its evolution. More studies are needed that test the adaptive nature of plasticity, and additional theoretical explorations on adaptive and non-adaptive plasticity are encouraged.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.