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Contesting the evidence for non-adaptive plasticity

Nature volume 555, pages E21–E22 (2018)Cite this article

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ARISING FROM C. K. Ghalambor et al. Nature 525, 372–375 (2015); doi:https://doi.org/10.1038/nature15256

The effect of phenotypic plasticity on the evolution of traits is a highly controversial subject. Ghalambor et al.1 added a new spin to this debate as they contrasted gene expression patterns of guppy populations evolved at two different predation levels. After four generations in a new environment, gene expression plasticity evolved with two interesting key features: (1) in environments without predation, gene expression in the evolved populations changed in a direction that decreases ancestral plasticity; and (2) the ancestral level of plasticity and the magnitude of change in plasticity are negatively correlated. However, this pattern could be an artefact of the analysis procedure rather than reflecting selection, and simple computer simulations that assume no divergence in gene expression between populations and only stochastic variation are able to replicate the pattern. There is a Reply to this Comment by Ghalambor, C. K. et al. Nature 555, https://doi.org/10.1038/nature25497 (2018).

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Figure 1: Negative correlations between ancestral plasticity and divergence in gene expression, and between the magnitude of plasticity in the source population and the evolved mean change in plasticity.
Figure 2: Schematic representation of the negative correlation between the changes in gene expression observed in the predator-free environment and the ancestral plasticity when all values are randomly sampled from a normal distribution.

References

  1. Ghalambor, C. K. et al. Non-adaptive plasticity potentiates rapid adaptive evolution of gene expression in nature. Nature 525, 372–375 (2015)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Populationsgenetik, Vetmeduni Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    François Mallard, Ana Marija Jakšić & Christian Schlötterer

  2. Vienna Graduate School of Population Genetics, Vienna, Austria

    Ana Marija Jakšić

Authors
  1. François Mallard
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  2. Ana Marija Jakšić
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  3. Christian Schlötterer
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Contributions

F.M. performed simulations and analysed the data. F.M., A.M.J. and C.S. conceived the study and wrote the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christian Schlötterer.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Supplementary Information

This file contains Supplementary Text, Supplementary Figures 1-5 and a Supplementary Reference. (PDF 375 kb)

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Mallard, F., Jakšić, A. & Schlötterer, C. Contesting the evidence for non-adaptive plasticity. Nature 555, E21–E22 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature25496

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