Journal ArticleDOI
The adaptive advantage of phenotypic memory in changing environments.
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TLDR
It is argued that carry-over effects represent an adaptive mechanism on the ecological timescale that fills the gap between short-term individual adaptations and long-term evolutionary adaptations.Abstract:
The adaptive value of carry-over effects, the persistence of induced phenotypes for several generations despite the change in the conditions that first induced these phenotypes, is studied in the framework of a simple model. Three different organismal strategies-non-inducible (genetic), completely inducible (plastic), and intermediate (carry-over)-are compared in fitness terms within three different environments. Analytical results and numerical simulations show that carry-over effects can have an advantage in stochastic environments even over organisms with high adaptive plasticity. We argue that carry-over effects represent an adaptive mechanism on the ecological timescale that fills the gap between short-term individual adaptations and long-term evolutionary adaptations. An extension of the concept of plasticity to incorporate the time dimension and include the stability of induced phenotypes through both clonal and sexual generations, is suggested.read more
Citations
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Effect of In Utero and Early-Life Conditions on Adult Health and Disease
TL;DR: Evidence from several disciplines is synthesized to support the contention that environmental factors acting during development should be accorded greater weight in models of disease causation.
Journal ArticleDOI
Living with the past: evolution, development, and patterns of disease
Peter D. Gluckman,Mark A. Hanson +1 more
TL;DR: Research in evolutionary biology, developmental biology, and animal and human physiology suggests that environmental processes influencing the propensity to disease in adulthood operate during the periconceptual, fetal, and infant phases of life.
Journal ArticleDOI
Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance: prevalence, mechanisms, and implications for the study of heredity and evolution
Eva Jablonka,Gal Raz +1 more
TL;DR: The analysis of data shows that epigenetic inheritance is ubiquitous and suggests lines of research that go beyond present approaches to the subject, as well as pointing to the importance of recognizing and understanding epigenetics for practical and theoretical issues in biology.
Journal ArticleDOI
Early life events and their consequences for later disease: a life history and evolutionary perspective.
TL;DR: It is proposed that the DOHaD phenomenon can be considered as a subset of the broader processes of developmental plasticity by which organisms adapt to their environment during their life course, allowing genotypic variation to be preserved through transient environmental changes.
Journal ArticleDOI
Assessing the Impact of Transgenerational Epigenetic Variation on Complex Traits
Frank Johannes,Emmanuelle Porcher,Emmanuelle Porcher,Felipe Karam Teixeira,Felipe Karam Teixeira,Vera Saliba-Colombani,Vera Saliba-Colombani,Matthieu Simon,Nicolas Agier,Agnès Bulski,Agnès Bulski,Juliette Albuisson,Fabiana Heredia,Pascal Audigier,David Bouchez,Christine Dillmann,Philippe Guerche,Vincent Colot,Vincent Colot +18 more
TL;DR: The demonstration that numerous epialleles across the genome can be stable over many generations in the absence of selection or extensive DNA sequence variation highlights the need to integrate epigenetic information into population genetics studies.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Maternal effects in plants
Deborah A. Roach,Renata D. Wulff +1 more
TL;DR: It is contention that despite evidence that maternal effects can have a large in fluence on offspring phenotype, few detailed studies have identified the specific causes of maternal effects, particularly in natural populations.
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The Evolutionary Maintenance of Alternative Phenotypes
TL;DR: Polyphenism may be restricted to circumstances in which the developmental switch occurs during very early development, and the abundance of seasonal polyphenisms in multivoltine organisms suggests that where environments are favorable, developmental systems are often flexible enough for the establishment of simple polyphenism.
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Adaptive evolution of highly mutable loci in pathogenic bacteria.
TL;DR: The authors argue that the coexistence within bacterial genomes of such "contingency" genes with high mutation rates and "housekeeping" genes having low mutation rates is the result of adaptive evolution and facilitates the efficient exploration of phenotypic solutions to unpredictable aspects of the host environment.
Journal ArticleDOI
On population growth in a randomly varying environment
R. C. Lewontin,D. Cohen +1 more
TL;DR: If a population is growing in a randomly varying environment, such that the finite rate of increase per generation is a random variable with no serial autocorrelation, the logarithm of population size at any time t is normally distributed.