ArticleBMC ecology and evolution2021
Development and selective grain make plasticity 'take the lead' in adaptive evolution.
Article in BMC ecology and evolution, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
The trial behind it
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed.
- System drift in the evolution of plant meristem development.PLoS genetics · 2026Article
- Do alternative reproductive tactics facilitate evolutionary rescue? A comment on Knell & Parrett 2024.Evolution letters · 2026Article
- Congruence between noise and plasticity in protein expression.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Genetic properties underlying transcriptional variability across different perturbations.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Simulating macroevolutionary trends and open-ended evolution with a novel mechanistic multi-level approach.PloS one · 2025Article
- Facilitation of Evolution by Plasticity Scales with Phenotypic Complexity.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Article
- On the evolutionary origin of discrete phenotypic plasticity.G3 (Bethesda, Md.) · 2024Article
- Utilizing developmental dynamics for evolutionary prediction and control.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Developmental bias as a cause and consequence of adaptive radiation and divergence.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2024Review
- The Boltzmann distributions of molecular structures predict likely changes through random mutations.Biophysical journal · 2023Article
- Developmental bias predicts 60 million years of wing shape evolution.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Phenotypic plasticity evolves at multiple biological levels in response to environmental predictability in a long-term experiment with a halotolerant microalga.PLoS 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
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundBiological evolution exhibits an extraordinary capability to adapt organisms to their environments. The explanation for this often takes for granted that random genetic variation produces at least some beneficial phenotypic variation in which natural selection can act. Such genetic evolvability could itself be a product of evolution, but it is widely acknowledged that the immediate selective gains of evolvability are small on short timescales. So how do biological systems come to exhibit such extraordinary capacity to evolve? One suggestion is that adaptive phenotypic plasticity makes genetic evolution find adaptations faster. However, the need to explain the origin of adaptive plasticity puts genetic evolution back in the driving seat, and genetic evolvability remains unexplained.
resultsTo better understand the interaction between plasticity and genetic evolvability, we simulate the evolution of phenotypes produced by gene-regulation network-based models of development. First, we show that the phenotypic variation resulting from genetic and environmental perturbation are highly concordant. This is because phenotypic variation, regardless of its cause, occurs within the relatively specific space of possibilities allowed by development. Second, we show that selection for genetic evolvability results in the evolution of adaptive plasticity and vice versa. This linkage is essentially symmetric but, unlike genetic evolvability, the selective gains of plasticity are often substantial on short, including within-lifetime, timescales. Accordingly, we show that selection for phenotypic plasticity can be effective in promoting the evolution of high genetic evolvability.
conclusionsWithout overlooking the fact that adaptive plasticity is itself a product of genetic evolution, we show how past selection for plasticity can exercise a disproportionate effect on genetic evolvability and, in turn, influence the course of adaptive evolution.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.