ArticleScientific reports2023
Rapid evolution of phenotypic plasticity in patchy habitats.
Article in Scientific reports, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 12 citations in OpenAlex.
- Genomic investigations of successful invasions: the picture emerging from recent studies.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Pooled it
- Evolution of phenotypic plasticity owing to migration.Evolution letters · 2026Article
- Ecotypic divergence in Mongolian Scots pine persists via large-effect genetic adaptation and phenotypic plasticity.BMC plant biology · 2025Article
- Evolutionary balance between genomic conservation and coral reef adaptation in the yellow boxfish (Zoological research · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Phenotypic plasticity may evolve rapidly, enabling a population's persistence in the face of sudden environmental change. Rapid evolution can occur when there is considerable genetic polymorphism at selected loci. We propose that balancing selection could be one of the mechanisms that sustain such polymorphism for plasticity. We use stochastic Monte Carlo simulations and deterministic analysis to investigate the evolution of a plasticity modifier locus in structured populations inhabiting favorable and adverse environments, i.e. patchy habitats. We survey a wide range of parameters including selective pressures on a target (structural) locus, plasticity effects, population sizes, and migration patterns between demes including periodic or continuous bidirectional and source-sink dynamics. We find that polymorphism in phenotypic plasticity can be maintained under a wide range of environmental scenarios in both favorable and adverse environments due to the balancing effect of population structure in patchy habitats. This effect offers a new plausible explanation for the rapid evolution of plasticity in nature: Phenotypic plasticity may rapidly evolve from genetic variation maintained by balancing selection if the population has experienced immigration from populations under different selection regimes.
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