Plasticity's role in adaptive evolution depends on environmental change components

To forecast extinction risks of natural populations under climate change and direct human impacts, an integrative understanding of both phenotypic plasticity and adaptive evolution is essential. To date, the evidence for whether, when, and how much plasticity facilitates adaptive responses in changing environments is contradictory. We argue that explicitly considering three key environmental change components - rate of change, variance, and temporal autocorrelation - affords a unifying framework of the impact of plasticity on adaptive evolution. These environmental components each distinctively effect evolutionary and ecological processes underpinning population viability. Using this framework, we develop expectations regarding the interplay between plasticity and adaptive evolution in natural populations. This framework has the potential to improve pre-dictions of population viability in a changing world.

Automated summary

To predict the risks of extinction of natural populations, it is important to consider both phenotypic plasticity and adaptive evolution. However, there is contradicting evidence regarding the role of plasticity in facilitating adaptive responses in changing environments. This study proposes a framework that explicitly considers the rate of change, variance, and temporal autocorrelation as key components of environmental change, which can improve predictions of population viability.