Who came up with phenotypic plasticity?
Anthony Bradshaw
The major conceptual advancement for plasticity research was in 1965 when Anthony Bradshaw proposed that phenotypic plasticity and the ability to express alternative phenotypes must be genetically controlled [6]. Some plants develop alternative phenotypes in response to extreme environmental conditions.
Is Polyphenism phenotypic plasticity?
Phenotypic plasticity can be observed across the animal and plant kingdoms. Polyphenism is a special case of phenotypic plasticity where development exhibits reproducible bifurcations revealing multiple distinct outcomes (e.g., worker vs. queen bee).
What’s the difference between phenotypic plasticity and evolution?
The ability to pass changes from one generation to the next is a defining characteristic of evolution. This non-heritable change in the mustard seedling is called phenotypic plasticity, meaning that the organism’s phenotype is flexible and can be influenced by the environment.
What causes Polyphenism?
A mechanism has been proposed for the evolutionary development of polyphenisms: A mutation results in a novel, heritable trait. The trait’s frequency expands in the population, creating a population on which selection can act.
What is insect Polyphenism?
Polyphenism is the phenomenon where two or more distinct phenotypes are produced by the same genotype. Examples of polyphenism provide some of the most compelling systems for the study of epigenetics.
What is the difference between polymorphism and polyphenism?
Polymorphism is heritable, and is modified by selection (either artificial or in the wild). In polyphenism, an individual’s genetic make-up allows for different morphs, and the switch mechanism that determines which morph is shown is environmental.
What is behavioral polyphenism?
Polyphenisms are discrete alternative phenotypes that arise not from an organism’s genetic information but from environmental cues that are received during development. Insect behavior reaches its highest level of complexity in the social insects as a consequence of their ability to evolve alternative polyphenisms.
What are three ways to study the evolution of phenotypic plasticity?
The evolution of plasticity is modeled in three ways: optimality models, quantitative genetic models, and gametic models.
What is meant by polyphenism?
Where do you find polyphenism?
A sequential polyphenism occurs in holometabolous insects that undergo differing forms of larvae, pupae, and adults during their development. An alternative polyphenism occurs in the castes found in many social insects, where workers, soldiers, and reproductive castes can all arise from the same genotype.
Which is a special case of polyphenic plasticity?
A polyphenic trait is a trait for which multiple, discrete phenotypes can arise from a single genotype as a result of differing environmental conditions. It is therefore a special case of phenotypic plasticity.
How are polyphenic forms similar to genetic polymorphism?
When polyphenic forms exist at the same time in the same panmictic (interbreeding) population they can be compared to genetic polymorphism. With polyphenism, the switch between morphs is environmental, but with genetic polymorphism the determination of morph is genetic.
What happens when polyphenism is present in an organism?
When a polyphenism is present, an environmental cue causes the organism to develop along a separate pathway, resulting in distinct morphologies; thus, the response to the environmental cue is “all or nothing.”
Why are Some polyphenisms more efficient than others?
In cannibalistic polyphenisms, some individuals in a population are cannibalistic, while others are not even though both types have the same genetic background. Cannibals commonly have modifications to their eating machinery (bigger jaws and sharper teeth) that make them more efficient cannibals.