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Predation drives local adaptation of phenotypic plasticity

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 2, pages 100–107 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

Phenotypic plasticity is the ability of an individual genotype to alter aspects of its phenotype depending on the current environment. It is central to the persistence, resistance and resilience of populations facing variation in physical or biological factors. Genetic variation in plasticity is pervasive, which suggests its local adaptation is plausible. Existing studies on the adaptation of plasticity typically focus on single traits and a few populations, while theory about interactions among genes (for example, pleiotropy) suggests that a multi-trait, landscape scale (for example, multiple populations) perspective is required. We present data from a landscape scale, replicated, multi-trait experiment using a classic predator–prey system centred on the water flea Daphnia pulex. We find predator regime-driven differences in genetic variation of multivariate plasticity. These differences are associated with strong divergent selection linked to a predation regime. Our findings are evidence for local adaptation of plasticity, suggesting that responses of populations to environmental variation depend on the conditions in which they evolved in the past.

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Fig. 1: Univariate plasticity in the five traits.
Fig. 2: Genetic variance–covariance matrix visualizations for each treatment within each regime.
Fig. 3: Genetic variance–covariance matrix visualizations for each regime within each treatment.
Fig. 4: Multivariate Q ST – F ST analyses, following refs 23,25,26, showing evidence of strong divergent selection among all eight populations, estimated in each predation risk treatment; this is associated with predation regime (see text for details).

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Acknowledgements

We thank S.R. Dennis, J. Slate and A. Bergland for constructive comments and discussion. M. Karhunen provided statistical advice and code support. J.R. was supported by a Natural Environment Research Council CASE PhD with support from the Freshwater Biological Association. M.I.L. was supported by the Swedish Research Council (623-2010-848). M.R.R. was supported by a Natural Environment Research Council early-career fellowship (NE/G013535/1) and is currently supported by the University of Lausanne. A.P.B. was supported by a Natural Environment Research Council standard grant (NE/D012244/1) and the University of Sheffield.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S10 2TN, UK

    Julia Reger & Andrew P. Beckerman

  2. Department of Animal Ecology, Evolutionary Biology Centre, Uppsala University, 75236, Uppsala, Sweden

    Martin I. Lind

  3. Department of Computational Biology, University of Lausanne, CH-1015, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Matthew R. Robinson

  4. Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, CH-1015, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Matthew R. Robinson

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  1. Julia Reger
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J.R. and A.P.B. designed the research. J.R. and M.I.L. collected the data. A.P.B. and M.R.R. developed the methods. J.R., A.P.B., M.R.R. and M.I.L. analysed the data and wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Andrew P. Beckerman.

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Supplementary figures 1–4; supplementary tables 1–2.

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Reger, J., Lind, M.I., Robinson, M.R. et al. Predation drives local adaptation of phenotypic plasticity. Nat Ecol Evol 2, 100–107 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-017-0373-6

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