Role of phenotypic plasticity and population differentiation in adaptation to novel environmental conditions

Food quality is a critical environmental condition that impacts an animal’s growth and development. Many insects facing this challenge have evolved a phenotypically plastic, adaptive response. For example, many species of insect exhibit facultative wing growth, which reflects a physiological and evolutionary trade-off between dispersal and reproduction, triggered by environmental conditions. What the environmental cues are and how they are transduced to produce these alternative forms, and their associated ecological shift from dispersal to reproduction, remains an important unsolved problem in evolutionary ecology. In this study, we investigated the role that host quality has on the induction of wing development in a wing polyphenic insect exhibiting strong tradeoffs in investment between dispersal and reproduction, the brown planthopper, a serious rice pest in Asia. As rice plants grow, the short-winged brown planthopper dominates the population, but a shift occurs as the plants mature and senesce in the field such that long-winged brown planthoppers emerge and migrate. It remains unknown how changes in the rice plant induce development of the long-winged morph, despite recent discoveries on the role of the insulin and JNK signaling pathways in wing development. We found that by mimicking the glucose concentration of senescing rice plants, we significantly increased the proportion of long-winged female planthoppers. The effects of glucose on wing morph are additive with previously described effects of density. Our results show that host quality both directly regulates phenotypic plasticity and interacts with other factors such as density to produce the appropriate phenotype for specific environmental conditions.

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Climate change, biosystematics and taxonomy

Bangladesh Journal of Plant Taxonomy ◽

10.3329/bjpt.v28i1.54223 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 28 (1) ◽

pp. 277-287

Author(s):

M Khairul Alam

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Phenotypic Plasticity ◽

Environmental Conditions ◽

Information Needs ◽

Adaptive Significance ◽

High Incidence ◽

Plant Taxon ◽

History Of ◽

Impacts Of Climate Change

The history of biosystematics research and its impacts on climate goes before political ramifications. Climate change is altering the environments and likely to result in changes in the distribution of species, flowering times; migrate and adapt to the new environmental conditions; or extinction. Adaptive capacity is the ability of the plants to adapt to the impacts of climate change. Adaptation process is going in nature through phenotypic plasticity, natural selection or migration or polyploidization. The options are not mutually exclusive. Phenotypic plasticity may be the most efficient way of adaptation to a new environment. Polyploidization may increase tolerance to diverse ecological conditions and the high incidence of polyploidy in plants indicates its adaptive significance. Population having polyploid pillar complex is a good backup support towards microevolution and speciation, a mode of adaptation. The paper discusses about these biosystematics approaches towards adaptation to new environmental conditions resulting from climate change. It also discusses about the role of taxonomists under the changed circumstances. It is evident from the review that a set of biosystematics data along with other ecological and conservation information needs to be included in Flora and Monographs. It reveals that it was as far as worked out at the Paris Botanical Congress 1954 and put up by Stebbins in a series of proposals, termed as “Stebbins’ Ten Points” that needs further enrichment. Bangladesh J. Plant Taxon. 28(1): 277-287, 2021 (June)

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Nematode Interactions on Beetle Hosts Indicate a Role of Mouth-Form Plasticity in Resource Competition

Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution ◽

10.3389/fevo.2021.752695 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 9 ◽

Author(s):

Tess Renahan ◽

Ralf J. Sommer

Keyword(s):

Phenotypic Plasticity ◽

Resource Availability ◽

Environmental Conditions ◽

Resource Competition ◽

Development Stage ◽

Future Generations ◽

La Réunion ◽

Natural Context ◽

La Réunion Island

Competition is rampant across kingdoms, arising over potential mates, food resources, and space availability. When faced with opponents, phenotypic plasticity proffers organisms indispensable advantageous strategies to outcompete rivals. This tactic is especially crucial on decaying insect hosts as myriad microbes and numerous nematodes struggle to establish thriving populations and ensure resource availability for future generations. Scarab beetles and their associated nematode symbionts on La Réunion Island have provided exceptional systems to study complicated cross-phylum interactions in soil, and recently we have identified a previously unexplored beetle host, Gymnogaster bupthalma, to be reliably co-infested with diplogastrids Pristionchus mayeri and Acrostichus spp. These nematodes maintain the capacity to plastically respond to environmental conditions by developing disparate mouth forms, a strict bacterial-feeding morph or an omnivorous morph that enables predation on other nematodes. In addition, under stressful settings these worms can enter an arrested development stage called dauer, non-feeding dispersal larvae that resume development into reproducing adults when conditions improve. By investigating this beetle-nematode system in a natural context, we uncovered a novel Pristionchus strategy, wherein dauer dispersal from the carcass is gradual and a reproducing population is sustained. Remarkably, usually preferential-bacterial morph P. mayeri develop as predators in populations dense with competitors.

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Beyond buying time: the role of plasticity in phenotypic adaptation to rapid environmental change

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences ◽

10.1098/rstb.2018.0174 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 374 (1768) ◽

pp. 20180174 ◽

Cited By ~ 76

Author(s):

Rebecca J. Fox ◽

Jennifer M. Donelson ◽

Celia Schunter ◽

Timothy Ravasi ◽

Juan D. Gaitán-Espitia

Keyword(s):

Phenotypic Plasticity ◽

Environmental Change ◽

Environmental Conditions ◽

Theme Issue ◽

The Future ◽

Selection For ◽

The Individual ◽

Plastic Responses ◽

Rapid Environmental Change

How populations and species respond to modified environmental conditions is critical to their persistence both now and into the future, particularly given the increasing pace of environmental change. The process of adaptation to novel environmental conditions can occur via two mechanisms: (1) the expression of phenotypic plasticity (the ability of one genotype to express varying phenotypes when exposed to different environmental conditions), and (2) evolution via selection for particular phenotypes, resulting in the modification of genetic variation in the population. Plasticity, because it acts at the level of the individual, is often hailed as a rapid-response mechanism that will enable organisms to adapt and survive in our rapidly changing world. But plasticity can also retard adaptation by shifting the distribution of phenotypes in the population, shielding it from natural selection. In addition to which, not all plastic responses are adaptive—now well-documented in cases of ecological traps. In this theme issue, we aim to present a considered view of plasticity and the role it could play in facilitating or hindering adaption to environmental change. This introduction provides a re-examination of our current understanding of the role of phenotypic plasticity in adaptation and sets the theme issue's contributions in their broader context. Four key themes emerge: the need to measure plasticity across both space and time; the importance of the past in predicting the future; the importance of the link between plasticity and sexual selection; and the need to understand more about the nature of selection on plasticity itself. We conclude by advocating the need for cross-disciplinary collaborations to settle the question of whether plasticity will promote or retard species' rates of adaptation to ever-more stressful environmental conditions. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The role of plasticity in phenotypic adaptation to rapid environmental change’.

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The role of hormones

10.1093/oso/9780198797500.003.0004 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

H. Frederik Nijhout ◽

Emily Laub

Keyword(s):

Phenotypic Plasticity ◽

Social Behavior ◽

Parental Care ◽

Juvenile Hormone ◽

Reproductive Behavior ◽

Hormonal Control ◽

Plastic Trait

Many behaviors of insects are stimulated, modified, or modulated by hormones. The principal hormones involved are the same as the ones that control moulting, metamorphosis, and other aspects of development, principally ecdysone and juvenile hormone. In addition, a small handful of neurosecretory hormones are involved in the control of specific behaviors. Because behavior is a plastic trait, this chapter begins by outlining the biology and hormonal control of phenotypic plasticity in insects, and how the hormonal control of behavior fits in with other aspects of the control of phenotypic plasticity. The rest of the chapter is organized around the diversity of behaviors that are known to be controlled by or affected by hormones. These include eclosion and moulting behavior, the synthesis and release of pheromones, migration, parental care, dominance, reproductive behavior, and social behavior.

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The Impact of Different Environmental Conditions during Vegetative Propagation on Growth, Survival, and Biochemical Characteristics in Populus Hybrids in Clonal Field Trial

Forests ◽

10.3390/f12070892 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (7) ◽

pp. 892

Author(s):

Valda Gudynaitė-Franckevičienė ◽

Alfas Pliūra

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Phenotypic Plasticity ◽

Environmental Conditions ◽

Vegetative Propagation ◽

Genotypic Variation ◽

Hybrid Poplar ◽

Field Trials ◽

Biochemical Traits ◽

Suburban Areas ◽

Growing Conditions

To have a cleaner environment, good well-being, and improve the health of citizens it is necessary to expand green urban and suburban areas using productive and adapted material of tree species. The quality of urban greenery, resistance to negative climate change factors and pollution, as well as efficiency of short-rotation forestry in suburban areas, depends primarily on the selection of hybrids and clones, suitable for the local environmental conditions. We postulate that ecogenetic response, phenotypic plasticity, and genotypic variation of hybrid poplars (Populus L.) grown in plantations are affected not only by the peculiarities of hybrids and clones, but also by environmental conditions of their vegetative propagation. The aim of the present study was to estimate growth and biochemical responses, the phenotypic plasticity, genotypic variation of adaptive traits, and genetically regulated adaptability of Populus hybrids in field trials which may be predisposed by the simulated contrasting temperature conditions at their vegetative propagation phase. The research was performed with the 20 cultivars and experimental clones of one intraspecific cross and four different interspecific hybrids of poplars propagated under six contrasting temperature regimes in phytotron. The results suggest that certain environmental conditions during vegetative propagation not only have a short-term effect on tree viability and growth, but also can help to adapt to climate change conditions and grow successfully in the long-term. It was found that tree growth and biochemical traits (the chlorophyll A and B, pigments content and the chlorophyll A/B ratio) of hybrid poplar clones grown in field trials, as well as their traits’ genetic parameters, were affected by the rooting-growing conditions during vegetative propagation phase. Hybrids P. balsamifera × P. trichocarpa, and P. trichocarpa × P. trichocarpa have shown the most substantial changes of biochemical traits across vegetative propagation treatments in field trial. Rooting-growing conditions during vegetative propagation had also an impact on coefficients of genotypic variation and heritability in hybrid poplar clones when grown in field trials.

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