Does phenotypic plasticity help or hinder rapid adaptation?

Phenotypic plasticity is the ability of a single genotype to make different phenotypes in
response to environmental variation. If all genotypes in a population respond to an
environmental change in the same way plasticity can diminish the heritable phenotypic
variation that selection acts on and slow down adaptation. In contrast, if all genotypes
respond in very different ways, plasticity may speed up rapid adaptation. Whether or not
plasticity helps or hinders adaptation therefore depends on the time that selection has had to
shape the plastic responses of a population to the stressor it is facing. In this context, the
effect that plasticity has on rapid adaptation could be quite different for populations adapting
to aspects of climate change that have always been part of a population's evolutionary
history, compared with adaptation to 'novel' anthropogenic environments such as pollutants.
Clonal organisms allow us to test this hypothesis because we can expose the same genomes
to different environments and compare the effect that they have on individuals, populations
and communities.
The aim of this project is to test the hypothesis that plastic responses to climate-related
stressors slows down adaptation whereas plastic responses to 'novel' environments speeds it
up. The relevance of these findings will be determined by comparing rates of adaptation in
replicated populations exposed to combinations of stressors in the laboratory. Although there
is some laboratory evidence that novel environments expose cryptic genetic variation to
selection, we still have little understanding of how relevant this is in natural populations,
where phenotypes depend on adaptive and non-adaptive plastic responses to many
environmental heterogeneities. Understanding these interactions is critical for predicting how
populations respond to environmental change. This studentship applies diverse approaches,
including field and laboratory skills, microscopy, image analysis, and high-level statistical
analysis to investigate the mechanisms underpinning rapid adaptation.