General quantitative genetic models to explore evolutionary conditions and implications of reversible and irreversible phenotypic plasticity.

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Wilfried Gabriel
• Subject Area: Evolutionary Cell and Developmental Biology (Zoology)
• Term: from 2009 to 2014
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 148665956

Phenotypic plasticity occurs in traits ranging from morphology to physiology and behavior and can be observed in nearly all classes of organisms. Understanding the selective advantage and the limits of plasticity (i.e., why and how individual organisms respond phenotypically to environmental changes) is crucial to numerous issues in evolution and ecology.Environmental tolerance functions describe how fitness of an organism depends on the environmental state. Mode and variance of these tolerance functions can be treated as quantitative genetic traits and its values may be altered if an organism performs phenotypic plastic changes induced by environmental cues. Non-plastic, irreversible plastic or reversible plastic genotypes are favored depending on time pattern and variance of environmental changes, on the reliability of the environmental cues, on the time spans needed to perform plastic shifts and on the costs of plasticity.By extending and testing a recent model about reversible phenotypic plasticity a general tool will be developed in order to analyze how and under which conditions phenotypic plasticity influences direction and speed of evolution.key words: phenotypic plasticity, environmental tolerance, reliability of environmental cues, costs of plasticity, delayed response.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants