Phenotypic plasticity is the ability of a single genotype to produce more than one alternative form of morphology, physiological state, and/or behavior in response to environmental conditions. "Plasticity" and "development" are related terms that are becoming increasingly common in evolutionary biology and ecology. Both phenomena have passed through a period of neglect. In the 1960s Wigglesworth (228, p. 107) described some geneticists as being "apologetic" about environmentally cued polymorphisms, which they considered examples of unfortunate defects in the delicate genetic apparatus: "As R. A. Fisher once said to me, it is not surprising that such elaborate machinery should sometimes go wrong." And Bradshaw (19, p. 148) noted that botanists were carefully avoiding any mention of plasticity; environmental effects in experiments were considered "only an embarrassment." Until recently, genetic considerations have predominated in discussions of evolution and selection. Compared to the enormous progress made in genetics, there has been relatively little systematic effort to analyze environmental effects on the phenotype, and their evolutionary consequences. The plastic phenotype, stigmatized by poorly understood environmental influences and the ghost of Lamarck, has sometimes been lost from view as the focus of selection (e.g. 46; but see 48, 49). Much recent progress has been made toward integrating developmental and evolutionary biology, especially in vertebrate morphology (2, 12, 16, 216), developmental genetics (16, 163, 164), and molecular biology (103; also see 10, 111). "Developmental constraints" is a term symptomatic of this progress, though an unfortunate one because it seems to imply that the main effect of

Phenotypic Plasticity and the Origins of Diversity

All too often in evolutionary biology we are led to speculate or infer the mode of action of natural selection; we usually do not know why some individuals are more adaptive than others. Very often attempts to measure natural selection are unsuccessful, leading to heated arguments about' the relative importance of selection, genetic drift, and epistasis in evolution (Lewontin, 1974). Until we know more about how and why natural selection occurs, attempts to measure it are quixotic, and discussions of its importance are theandric. It is no coincidence that most of the successful studies of natural selection have dealt with animal color patterns; it should be obvious which color patterns are more adaptive in the presence of visually hunting predators. The adaptive significance of warning coloration and mimicry of distasteful species has been worked out (Cott, 1940; Wickler, 1968; Edmunds, 1974; Rothschild, 1975; Turner, 1977). But most species are neither distasteful nor mimetic; most have inconspicuous or cryptic color patterns in their natural habitats (Poulton, 1890; Thayer, 1909; Cott, 1940; Endler, 1978). Most field and experimental studies have shown that the overall color or tone of inconspicuous species matches or approximates the background (DiCesnola, 1904; Sumner, 1934, 1935; Isley, 1938; Popham, 1942; Dice, 1947; Kettlewell, 1956, 1973; Turner, 1961; Kaufman, 1974; Wicklund, 1975; Curio, 1976), but they treated species with solid colors or

https://www.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1558-5646.1980.tb04790.x

Natural selection on color patterns in poecilia reticulata.

Are new species formed in rare catastrophes, distinct from the normal processes of phyletic evolution? Or does reproductive isolation evolve gradually, as a by-product of the divergence of gene pools? Mayr (120-124) has argued the former, holding that speciation usually results from genetic revolutions triggered by founder effects: An isolated population, small in numbers and in geographic extent, colonizes a new area. Both changes in selection pressures and genetic drift result in the rapid shift of many genes to a new, coadapted combination, which is reproductively isolated from the ancestral population. Carson (27, 29, 3 1) and Templeton (I175-180), among others, have put forward similar models. This cluster of theories is woven from many strands; we will try to tease these apart in order to find out precisely which processes may be involved in speciation by founder effect. By placing them in the context of other models, we will argue that, although founder effects may cause speciation under sufficiently stringent conditions, they are only one extreme of a continuous range of possibilities. Complete geographic isolation is unnecessary; absolute coadaptation between "closed" systems of alleles is unlikely; and divergence may be driven in a variety of ways, without the need for drastic external changes. Reproductive isolation is most likely to be built up gradually, in a

Genetic Revolutions, Founder Effects, and Speciation

▪ Abstract Mimicry and warning color are highly paradoxical adaptations. Color patterns in both Mullerian and Batesian mimicry are often determined by relatively few pattern-regulating loci with major effects. Many of these loci are “supergenes,” consisting of multiple, tightly linked epistatic elements. On the one hand, strong purifying selection on these genes must explain accurate resemblance (a reduction of morphological diversity between species), as well as monomorphic color patterns within species. On the other hand, mimicry has diversified at every taxonomic level; warning color has evolved from cryptic patterns, and there are mimetic polymorphisms within species, multiple color patterns in different geographic races of the same species, mimetic differences between sister species, and multiple mimicry rings within local communities. These contrasting patterns can be explained, in part, by the shape of a “number-dependent” selection function first modeled by Fritz Muller in 1879: Purifying selectio...

Turner J.R.G.

Papers

Butterfly mimicry: the genetical evolution of an adaptation.