PHENOTYPIC PLASTICITY MADE SIMPLE, BUT NOT TOO SIMPLE

Richard Gomulkiewicz, John R Stinchcombe 

Phenotypic plasticity refers to environment-dependent trait expression (Dewitt and Scheiner, 2004). Knowledge of phenotypic plasticity is important in virtually all areas of basic and applied biology. Researchers in applied fields (such as agriculture, medicine, public health, wildlife management, and conservation biology) have a vested interest in knowing how traits are or will be expressed under specific conditions. Ecologists are interested in how the expression of traits in different environmental conditions and habitats might affect population and community dynamics. And evolutionary biologists are interested in how traits with environmentally-conditional expression have and will evolve. The widespread interest in phenotypic plasticity has made it a prominent focus of biological research.

Phenotypic plasticity is an especially active research area in ecology and evolution with a brimming literature that has advanced the understanding of organismal variation, adaptation, and speciation (Sarkar, 2004; Pfennig, 2021). Most advances, especially recently, are based on highly simplified biological scenarios such as dichotomous environments or linear environmental gradients. Here we advocate a path for taking modern plasticity research in a far more biologically relevant direction.