Changing Latent Energy Environments: A Case for the Evolution of Plasticity

Plas t ic i t y can be broadly defined as the capacity for any type of phenotypic change to occur during life. It is often argued that one of the main advantages of plasticity for individuals in evolving populations is adaptation to changing environments (see, e.g., Johnson 1982, Belew 1990). This is independent of other, less direct forms of interaction between evolution and plasticity, such as the Baldwin effect (Baldwin 1896, Waddington 1942, Maynard Smith 1987, Hinton and Nowlan 1987, Belew 1990, Nolfi et al. 1990, Parisi et al. 1992). In this paper the effect of environmental temporal changes on evolution is studied, thus allowing to explore the above hypothesis and quantitatively test it. In particular, this is done by studying the correlation between environmental rate of change and the adaptive advantage of individual plasticity.