2 December 2022
Emily Standen
Department of Biology
University of Ottawa, Canada
Phenotypic plasticity is the ability of a single genotype to produce multiple phenotypes depending on the environment. It can be a highly effective way for an organism to maintain functional performance despite novel circumstances. Many people believe that plasticity plays a major role in adaptive selection and the course of evolution. The challenge is to understand how traits or characteristics, that are the result of an individual’s plastic response, are then incorporated into the genome such that they can be selected for in an adaptive evolutionary context. I will use Polypterus senegalus, an air breathing and facultatively amphibious fish, as a model organism that shows clear phenotypic plasticity when exposed to terrestrial environments. I will attempt to demonstrate how spatial and temporal scales are important when considering plastic responses and how they affect individual performance. We will discuss how plasticity and genetic fixed traits act in parallel and can confound our understanding of evolutionary processes. This will be a fun and somewhat philosophical discussion of adaptive flexibility from the tissue level to the organism.