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1. The importance of spatial and temporal structure in determining the interplay between plasticity and evolution

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2022.12.009  

   Vinton, Anna C.; Gascoigne, Samuel J.L.; Sepil, Irem; Salguero-Gómez, Roberto (March 2023, Trends in Ecology & Evolution)

   Dr Andrea E. A. Stephens (Ed.)

   Hoffmann and Bridle [ 1. ] describe two processes that the framework introduced by Vinton et al. [ 2. ] did not explicitly consider. These two processes, reversibility of plastic responses and time lags in sensitivity of responses to the environment, can affect how plasticity impacts evolution. These processes are easily incorporated into our framework by adding stage structure and lagged environmental drivers. In Vinton et al. [ 2. ], when discussing the costs of plasticity, we primarily focused on energetic impacts on fitness, and the role of environmental predictability. Hoffmann and Bridle [ 1. ] are correct that differential impacts of plasticity across an individual’s lifetime might determine its response to different types of environmental change. 

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2. Adaptive Phenotypic Plasticity Stabilizes Evolution in Fluctuating Environments

   https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2021.715381  

   Lalejini, Alexander; Ferguson, Austin J.; Grant, Nkrumah A.; Ofria, Charles (August 2021, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution)

   Fluctuating environmental conditions are ubiquitous in natural systems, and populations have evolved various strategies to cope with such fluctuations. The particular mechanisms that evolve profoundly influence subsequent evolutionary dynamics. One such mechanism is phenotypic plasticity, which is the ability of a single genotype to produce alternate phenotypes in an environmentally dependent context. Here, we use digital organisms (self-replicating computer programs) to investigate how adaptive phenotypic plasticity alters evolutionary dynamics and influences evolutionary outcomes in cyclically changing environments. Specifically, we examined the evolutionary histories of both plastic populations and non-plastic populations to ask: (1) Does adaptive plasticity promote or constrain evolutionary change? (2) Are plastic populations better able to evolve and then maintain novel traits? And (3), how does adaptive plasticity affect the potential for maladaptive alleles to accumulate in evolving genomes? We find that populations with adaptive phenotypic plasticity undergo less evolutionary change than non-plastic populations, which must rely on genetic variation from de novo mutations to continuously readapt to environmental fluctuations. Indeed, the non-plastic populations undergo more frequent selective sweeps and accumulate many more genetic changes. We find that the repeated selective sweeps in non-plastic populations drive the loss of beneficial traits and accumulation of maladaptive alleles, whereas phenotypic plasticity can stabilize populations against environmental fluctuations. This stabilization allows plastic populations to more easily retain novel adaptive traits than their non-plastic counterparts. In general, the evolution of adaptive phenotypic plasticity shifted evolutionary dynamics to be more similar to that of populations evolving in a static environment than to non-plastic populations evolving in an identical fluctuating environment. All natural environments subject populations to some form of change; our findings suggest that the stabilizing effect of phenotypic plasticity plays an important role in subsequent adaptive evolution. 

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3. Physiological adaptation to cities as a proxy to forecast global-scale responses to climate change

   https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.229336  

   Diamond, Sarah E.; Martin, Ryan A. (February 2021, Journal of Experimental Biology)

   null (Ed.)

   ABSTRACT Cities are emerging as a new venue to overcome the challenges of obtaining data on compensatory responses to climatic warming through phenotypic plasticity and evolutionary change. In this Review, we highlight how cities can be used to explore physiological trait responses to experimental warming, and also how cities can be used as human-made space-for-time substitutions. We assessed the current literature and found evidence for significant plasticity and evolution in thermal tolerance trait responses to urban heat islands. For those studies that reported both plastic and evolved components of thermal tolerance, we found evidence that both mechanisms contributed to phenotypic shifts in thermal tolerance, rather than plastic responses precluding or limiting evolved responses. Interestingly though, for a broader range of studies, we found that the magnitude of evolved shifts in thermal tolerance was not significantly different from the magnitude of shift in those studies that only reported phenotypic results, which could be a product of evolution, plasticity, or both. Regardless, the magnitude of shifts in urban thermal tolerance phenotypes was comparable to more traditional space-for-time substitutions across latitudinal and altitudinal clines in environmental temperature. We conclude by considering how urban-derived estimates of plasticity and evolution of thermal tolerance traits can be used to improve forecasting methods, including macrophysiological models and species distribution modelling approaches. Finally, we consider areas for further exploration including sub-lethal performance traits and thermal performance curves, assessing the adaptive nature of trait shifts, and taking full advantage of the environmental thermal variation that cities generate. 

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4. Complex eco‐evolutionary responses of a foundational coastal marsh plant to global change

   https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.19117  

   Vahsen, Megan L.; Kleiner, Helena S.; Kodak, Haley; Summers, Jennifer L.; Vahsen, Wendy L.; Blum, Michael J.; Megonigal, J. Patrick; McLachlan, Jason S. (July 2023, New Phytologist)

   Summary Predicting the fate of coastal marshes requires understanding how plants respond to rapid environmental change. Environmental change can elicit shifts in trait variation attributable to phenotypic plasticity and act as selective agents to shift trait means, resulting in rapid evolution. Comparably, less is known about the potential for responses to reflect the evolution of trait plasticity.Here, we assessed the relative magnitude of eco‐evolutionary responses to interacting global change factors using a multifactorial experiment. We exposed replicates of 32Schoenoplectus americanusgenotypes ‘resurrected’ from century‐long, soil‐stored seed banks to ambient or elevated CO₂, varying levels of inundation, and the presence of a competing marsh grass, across two sites with different salinities.Comparisons of responses to global change factors among age cohorts and across provenances indicated that plasticity has evolved in five of the seven traits measured. Accounting for evolutionary factors (i.e. evolution and sources of heritable variation) in statistical models explained an additional 9–31% of trait variation.Our findings indicate that evolutionary factors mediate ecological responses to environmental change. The magnitude of evolutionary change in plant traits over the last century suggests that evolution could play a role in pacing future ecosystem response to environmental change. 

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5. Fluctuating selection and global change: a synthesis and review on disentangling the roles of climate amplitude, predictability and novelty

   https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.0727  

   Bitter, M. C.; Wong, J. M.; Dam, H. G.; Donelan, S. C.; Kenkel, C. D.; Komoroske, L. M.; Nickols, K. J.; Rivest, E. B.; Salinas, S.; Burgess, S. C.; et al (August 2021, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences)

   A formidable challenge for global change biologists is to predict how natural populations will respond to the emergence of conditions not observed at present, termed novel climates. Popular approaches to predict population vulnerability are based on the expected degree of novelty relative to the amplitude of historical climate fluctuations experienced by a population. Here, we argue that predictions focused on amplitude may be inaccurate because they ignore the predictability of environmental fluctuations in driving patterns of evolution and responses to climate change. To address this disconnect, we review major findings of evolutionary theory demonstrating the conditions under which phenotypic plasticity is likely to evolve in natural populations, and how plasticity decreases population vulnerability to novel environments. We outline key criteria that experimental studies should aim for to effectively test theoretical predictions, while controlling for the degree of climate novelty. We show that such targeted tests of evolutionary theory are rare, with marine systems being overall underrepresented in this venture despite exhibiting unique opportunities to test theory. We conclude that with more robust experimental designs that manipulate both the amplitude and predictability of fluctuations, while controlling for the degree of novelty, we may better predict population vulnerability to climate change. 

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