Journal
JOURNAL OF EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY
Volume 24, Issue 12, Pages 2696-2704Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/j.1420-9101.2011.02393.x
Keywords
common frog; development rate; development time; genetic accommodation; growth rate; life-history shift; time constraints; trade-off
Categories
Funding
- Swedish Research Council
- Swedish Research Council FORMAS
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Phenotypic plasticity can be important for local adaptation, because it enables individuals to survive in a novel environment until genetic changes have been accumulated by genetic accommodation. By analysing the relationship between development rate and growth rate, it can be determined whether plasticity in life-history traits is caused by changed physiology or behaviour. We extended this to examine whether plasticity had been aiding local adaptation, by investigating whether the plastic response had been fixed in locally adapted populations. Tadpoles from island populations of Rana temporaria, locally adapted to different pool-drying regimes, were monitored in a common garden. Individual differences in development rate were caused by different foraging efficiency. However, developmental plasticity was physiologically mediated by trading off growth against development rate. Surprisingly, plasticity has not aided local adaptation to time-stressed environments, because local adaptation was not caused by genetic assimilation but on selection on the standing genetic variation in development time.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available