Evolution Letters最新文献

{"title":"Temperature can reverse sexual conflict, facilitating population growth.","authors":"Roberto García-Roa, Francisco Garcia-Gonzalez, Víctor Maroto, Valeria Chirinos, Ana Márquez-Rosado, Maider Iglesias-Carrasco, Pau Carazo","doi":"10.1093/evlett/qraf022","DOIUrl":"10.1093/evlett/qraf022","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Sexual conflict frequently gives rise to adaptations that increase male reproductive success at the expense of harming females (\"male harm\") and decreasing population growth. Studying the ecology of male harm is paramount to understand how sexual conflict unfolds in nature, and its consequences for populations viability. Here, we used seed beetles (<i>Callosobruchus maculatus</i>), a species where males harm females via both harassment and traumatic male insemination, to study whether temperature (24, 28, or 32 °C) can modulate male harm. We disentangled temperature effects on male harm via pre- and postcopulatory mechanisms (\"harassment and mating\") vs. precopulatory mechanisms (i.e., \"harassment\" only; ablated males). These treatments were applied under different levels of sexual conflict, with females continuously exposed throughout their lifespan to either no males (control; \"no harm\"), 1 male (low sexual conflict), or 2 males (high sexual conflict). Constant exposure to males decreased female fitness at warmer environments, particularly at 28 °C and when females were subject to constant harassment and mating under high sexual conflict. In contrast, constant exposure to male harassment and mating increased female fitness at 24 °C, particularly under low sexual conflict (significant ~14% increase vs. control females). At the population level, not being exposed constantly to males resulted in higher net reproductive rates at 28 and 32 °C, whereas constant male-female cohabitation resulted in optimal net reproductive rates at 24 °C, rescuing estimated population growth rate and thus reversing the cost/benefit balance of exposure to males. Our findings show that, by dictating the outcome of female fitness under constant male exposure, temperature can modulate sexual conflict to the point of reversing it and facilitating population growth. Our results support the emerging notion that environmental variation can significantly decrease overall levels of sexual conflict in nature.</p>","PeriodicalId":48629,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Letters","volume":"9 5","pages":"558-566"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12492134/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145233947","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Horizontal gene transfer, segregation loss, and the speed of microbial adaptation.","authors":"David V McLeod, Sylvain Gandon","doi":"10.1093/evlett/qraf024","DOIUrl":"10.1093/evlett/qraf024","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Microbial adaptation is driven by the circulation of mobile genetic elements (MGEs) among bacteria. On the one hand, MGEs can be viewed as selfish genes that spread like infectious diseases in a host population. On the other hand, the horizontal transfer and the loss of these MGEs are often viewed as a form of sexual reproduction that reshuffles genetic diversity in a way that may sometimes be adaptive for bacteria cells. Here, we show how these 2 perspectives can be reconciled using a single unified framework capturing the dynamics of multiple, interacting MGEs. We apply this framework to study how interactions between MGEs affecting rates of horizontal gene transfer and segregation loss shape the short- and long-term evolutionary dynamics of MGEs and the bacteria population. We show that these interactions produce nonrandom MGE associations that can speed up or slow down microbial adaptation depending on the evolutionary conflicts between MGEs as well as between MGEs and their bacterial hosts. Moreover, we show how these interactions affect the evolutionary potential of the bacteria population. We discuss the implications of these predictions for the community response to environmental stressors such as antibiotic treatment or vaccination campaigns as well as the evolution of accessory genomes.</p>","PeriodicalId":48629,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Letters","volume":"9 5","pages":"576-588"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12492298/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145234017","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Persistent maternal age effects on male offspring fitness traits in a wild mammal population.","authors":"Sanjana Ravindran, Kynan L Delaney, Xavier Bal, Jill G Pilkington, Josephine M Pemberton, Jacob A Moorad, Hannah Froy, Daniel H Nussey","doi":"10.1093/evlett/qraf021","DOIUrl":"10.1093/evlett/qraf021","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Effects of parental age on juvenile survival are well documented, but whether parental age has long-term consequences for the fitness of surviving offspring remains poorly understood. This is particularly the case for polygynous mammals, where differential impacts on sons versus daughters are predicted. Here, we investigate the effects of maternal and paternal age on offspring first-year survival, longevity, lifetime reproduction, and annual reproduction in a wild Soay sheep population. We find that younger and older mothers produced offspring that were less likely to survive their first year than middle-aged mothers, and this effect was independent of offspring sex. However, among offspring that survived their first year, adult lifespan and lifetime reproductive success were only influenced by maternal age in sons and not in daughters. Increased adult reproductive success in sons of middle-aged mothers, compared to young and old mothers, was not driven by maternal age effects on offspring reproductive ageing patterns, but potentially by consistent effects on offspring average annual reproductive performance. There was weak evidence of a paternal age effect on offspring longevity but no effect on other offspring traits. Our study shows long-lasting, sex-dependent maternal age effects on offspring fitness traits in the wild, adding to the growing body of literature that highlights the potential importance of intergenerational effects in natural populations.</p>","PeriodicalId":48629,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Letters","volume":"9 5","pages":"511-521"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12492104/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145233990","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Genetic divergence in population mean fitness is weakly associated with environmental and geographic distance in four prairie perennial forbs.","authors":"Anna R Peschel, Shelby A Flint, Georgiana May, Ruth G Shaw","doi":"10.1093/evlett/qraf018","DOIUrl":"10.1093/evlett/qraf018","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Plant propagules are frequently relocated between populations for restoration, especially in fragmented ecosystems like prairies, where few pristine patches remain. While research shows that plant populations often perform better in their native environments than in foreign sites, this pattern is not universal. The extent to which plant population fitness varies with distance from its site of origin remains unclear. Using aster models, we investigated the relationship of fitness with geographic distance and climate differences between the source and experimental sites for four perennial prairie forbs by planting 12 populations of each species at a north and south experimental site in the tallgrass prairie of Minnesota, USA. At both experimental sites, individuals from warmer and southern source sites had greater fitness, but the deviations of population mean fitnesses from the fitted relationships were substantial and idiosyncratic. Our results suggest limited effectiveness of geographic distance and temperature difference in predicting population mean fitness. This challenges the efficacy of long distance seed transfers as seed sourcing strategies to promote population persistence in prairie restorations.</p>","PeriodicalId":48629,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Letters","volume":"9 5","pages":"522-532"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12492125/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145233927","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Rapid temporal adaptation structures tolerance to toxic cyanobacteria in a natural population of the water flea <i>Daphnia</i>.","authors":"Maxime Fajgenblat, Emma Gouwy, Manon Coone, Rafaela Almeida, Alice Boudry, Kiani Cuypers, Edwin van den Berg, Isabel Vanoverberghe, Luc De Meester, Ellen Decaestecker","doi":"10.1093/evlett/qraf020","DOIUrl":"10.1093/evlett/qraf020","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Cyanobacteria blooms pose a substantial threat to freshwater systems globally. While zooplankton grazers such as <i>Daphnia</i> can have an important role in suppressing cyanobacteria blooms, cyanobacteria can adversely impact <i>Daphnia</i> fitness and even kill them. Earlier work has shown an evolutionary increase in tolerance to cyanobacteria across years and strong genotype × genotype interactions determining the interaction between <i>Daphnia</i> and the cyanobacterium <i>Microcystis</i>. Here, we test the hypothesis that <i>Daphnia magna</i> can adapt during 1 growing season to changes in dominant strains of <i>Microcystis</i>. Over 2 consecutive years, we collected <i>D. magna</i> clonal lineages and <i>Microcystis</i> strains from a single pond early and late in the growing season and we assessed whether <i>Daphnia</i> survival differed when exposed to <i>Microcystis</i> strains from either the same or a different time point within the growth season. Our findings reveal important <i>Daphnia</i> genotype × <i>Microcystis</i> genotype interactions, with <i>Daphnia</i> survival being higher when exposed to <i>Microcystis</i> from the same time point than when exposed to <i>Microcystis</i> of a different time point. Our results extend earlier findings to variation within 1 single natural system and growth season, and suggest an important impact of rapid (co)evolutionary dynamics shaping the tolerance of zooplankton grazers to cyanobacteria.</p>","PeriodicalId":48629,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Letters","volume":"9 5","pages":"548-557"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12492186/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145233985","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Repeated evolution of reduced visual investment at the onset of ecological speciation in high-altitude <i>Heliconius</i> butterflies.","authors":"David F Rivas-Sánchez, Jake Morris, Camilo Salazar, Carolina Pardo-Díaz, Richard M Merrill, Stephen H Montgomery","doi":"10.1093/evlett/qraf017","DOIUrl":"10.1093/evlett/qraf017","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Colonization of new habitats is typically followed by divergent selection acting on traits that are immediately important for fitness. For example, differences between sensory environments are often associated with variation in sensory traits critical for navigation and foraging. However, the extent to which the initial response to novel sensory conditions is mediated by phenotypic plasticity, and the contribution of sensory or neural adaptation to early species divergence remains unclear. We took advantage of repeated cases of speciation in <i>Heliconius</i> butterflies with independent allopatric distributions in the west of the Colombian and Ecuadorian Andes. Using volumetric brain measurements, we analyzed patterns of investment in primary sensory processing areas of the brain across different localities and habitats. We find that a higher altitude species, <i>Heliconius chestertonii</i>, differs in levels of investment in visual and olfactory brain components compared with its lower altitude relative <i>H. erato venus</i>, mainly attributable to broad-sense heritable variation as inferred from comparisons between wild and common-garden-reared individuals. We provide evidence that this variation is consistent with divergent selection, and compare these shifts with those reported for another high-altitude species, <i>H. himera</i>, and its parapatric lowland counterpart, <i>H. erato cyrbia</i>, to demonstrate parallel reductions in the size of specific optic lobe neuropils. Conversely, for the antennal lobe, we detected different trait shifts in <i>H. himera</i> and <i>H. chestertonii</i> relative to their lowland <i>H. erato</i> neighbors. Overall, our findings add weight to the adaptive potential of neuroanatomical divergence related to sensory processing during early species formation.</p>","PeriodicalId":48629,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Letters","volume":"9 4","pages":"502-510"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12448208/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145114749","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Continent-wide differentiation of fitness traits and patterns of climate adaptation among European populations of <i>Drosophila melanogaster</i>.","authors":"Esra Durmaz Mitchell, Envel Kerdaffrec, Ewan Harney, Tânia F Paulo, Marija Savic Veselinovic, Marija Tanaskovic, Venera Tyukmaeva, Teresa Abaurrea Fernandez de Arcaya, Cansu Aksoy, Eliza Argyridou, Tiphaine P M Bailly, Dogus Can, Ezgi Cobanoglu, Nicola Cook, Seda Coşkun, Slobodan Davidovic, Ekin Demir, Tânia Dias, Somayeh Rasouli-Dogaheh, Pedro Duque, Katarina Eric, Pavle Eric, Priscilla Erickson, Filip Filipovski, Bettina Fishman, Amanda Glaser-Schmitt, August Goldfischer, Llewellyn Green, Sonia Janillon, Mihailo Jelic, Hristina Kostic, Lucas E Kreiman, Natacha Kremer, Manolis Lyrakis, Oleksandr M Maistrenko, Sapho-Lou Marti, Megan McGunnigle, Miriam Merenciano, Mário S Mira, Vincent Montbel, Laurence Mouton, Dmitry V Mukha, Siddharth Murali, Aleksandra Patenkovic, Oleksandra Protsenko, Florencia A Putero, Micael Reis, Natalia V Roshina, Olga Y Rybina, Mads F Schou, Thibault Schowing, Senel Selin Senkal, Svitlana Serga, Virginie Trieu, Alexander V Symonenko, Mikhail V Trostnikov, Evgenia A Tsybul'ko, Joost van den Heuvel, David van Waarde, Ekaterina R Veselkina, Cristina P Vieira, Xiaocui Wang, Jelle Zandveld, Jessica Abbott, Jean-Christophe Billeter, Hervé Colinet, Mehregan Ebrahimi, Patricia Gibert, Jan Hrcek, Maaria Kankare, Iryna Kozeretska, Volker Loeschcke, Julián Mensch, Banu Sebnem Onder, John Parsch, Elena G Pasyukova, Marina Stamenkovic-Radak, Eran Tauber, Cristina Vieira, Christian Wegener, Katja M Hoedjes, Bas J Zwaan, Andrea J Betancourt, Claudia Fricke, Sonja Grath, Nico Posnien, Jorge Vieira, Martin Kapun, Christian Schlötterer, Paul Schmidt, Élio Sucena, Josefa González, Alan Bergland, Michael G Ritchie, Thomas Flatt","doi":"10.1093/evlett/qraf014","DOIUrl":"10.1093/evlett/qraf014","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>A particularly well-studied evolutionary model is the vinegar fly <i>Drosophila melanogaster</i>, a cosmopolitan insect of ancestral southern-central African origin. Recent work suggests that it expanded out of Africa ∼9,000 years ago, and spread from the Middle East into Europe ∼1,800 years ago. During its global expansion, this human commensal adapted to novel climate zones and habitats. Despite much work on phenotypic differentiation and adaptation on several continents (especially North America and Australia), typically in the context of latitudinal clines, little is known about phenotypic divergence among European populations. Here, we sought to provide a continent-wide study of phenotypic differentiation among European populations of <i>D. melanogaster</i>. In a consortium-wide phenomics effort, we assayed 16 fitness-related traits on a panel of 173 isofemale lines from 9 European populations, with the majority of traits measured by several groups using semi-standardized protocols. For most fitness-related traits, we found significant differentiation among populations on a continental scale. Despite inevitable differences in assay conditions among labs, the reproducibility and hence robustness of our measurements were overall remarkably good. Several fitness components (e.g., viability, development time) exhibited significant latitudinal or longitudinal clines, and populations differed markedly in multivariate trait structure. Notably, populations experiencing higher humidity/rainfall and lower maximum temperature showed higher viability, fertility, starvation resistance, and lifespan at the expense of lower heat-shock survival, suggesting a pattern of local adaptation. Our results indicate that derived populations of this tropical fly have been shaped by pervasive spatially varying multivariate selection and adaptation to different climates on the European continent.</p>","PeriodicalId":48629,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Letters","volume":"9 4","pages":"473-490"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12448211/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145114831","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Dynamics of infection and immunity over 50 years as marine stickleback adapt to freshwater.","authors":"Pranav Sriramulu, Dolph Schluter, Daniel I Bolnick","doi":"10.1093/evlett/qraf016","DOIUrl":"10.1093/evlett/qraf016","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>When a species colonizes a new environment, it may encounter new parasites to which its immune system is poorly adapted. After an initial spike in infection rates in the naïve founder population, the host may subsequently evolve increased immunity, thereby reducing infection rates. Here, we present an example of this eco-evolutionary process in a population of threespine stickleback (<i>Gasterosteus aculeatus</i>) that was founded in Heisholt Quarry, a man-made quarry pond, in 1967. Marine stickleback rarely encounter <i>Schistocephalus solidus</i> tapeworms (which require freshwater to hatch), and so remain highly susceptible to infection. Initially, introduced marine fish were heavily infected by <i>S. solidus</i>. They exhibited low levels of fibrosis, a heritable immune trait that some genotypes activate in response to infection, thereby suppressing tapeworm growth and viability. By the 1990s, the Heisholt Quarry population exhibited high rates of fibrosis, which partly suppressed <i>S. solidus</i> infection. This increased immune response led to reduced infection rates, and the tapeworm was apparently extirpated by 2021. Because fibrosis has a strong genetic basis in other stickleback populations, we infer that the newly founded stickleback-parasite interaction exhibits an eco-evolutionary process of increased immunity that effectively reduced infection. The infection and immune dynamics documented here closely match those expected from a simple eco-evo dynamic model presented here.</p>","PeriodicalId":48629,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Letters","volume":"9 4","pages":"383-391"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12448189/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145114739","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Predicting the contribution of single trait evolution to rescuing a plant population from demographic impacts of climate change.","authors":"Diane R Campbell, John M Powers, Justin Kipness","doi":"10.1093/evlett/qraf019","DOIUrl":"10.1093/evlett/qraf019","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Evolutionary adaptation can allow a population to persist in the face of a new environmental challenge. With many populations now threatened by environmental change, it is important to understand whether this process of evolutionary rescue is feasible under natural conditions, yet work on this topic has been largely theoretical. We used unique long-term data to parameterize deterministic and stochastic models of the contribution of 1 trait to evolutionary rescue using field estimates for the subalpine plant <i>Ipomopsis aggregata</i> and hybrids with its close relative <i>I. tenuituba</i>. In the absence of evolution or plasticity, the 2 studied populations are projected to go locally extinct due to earlier snowmelt under climate change, which imposes drought conditions. Phenotypic selection on specific leaf area (SLA) was estimated in 12 years and multiple populations. Those data on selection and its environmental sensitivity to annual snowmelt timing in the spring were combined with previous data on heritability of the trait, phenotypic plasticity of the trait, and the impact of snowmelt timing on mean absolute fitness. Selection favored low values of SLA (thicker leaves). The evolutionary response to selection on that single trait was insufficient to allow evolutionary rescue by itself, but in combination with phenotypic plasticity it promoted evolutionary rescue in 1 of the 2 populations. The number of years until population size would stop declining and begin to rise again was heavily dependent upon stochastic environmental changes in snowmelt timing around the trend line. Our study illustrates how field estimates of quantitative genetic parameters can be used to predict the likelihood of evolutionary rescue. Although a complete set of parameter estimates are generally unavailable, it may also be possible to predict the general likelihood of evolutionary rescue based on published ranges for phenotypic selection and heritability and the extent to which early snowmelt impacts fitness.</p>","PeriodicalId":48629,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Letters","volume":"9 5","pages":"533-547"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12492211/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145233930","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The evolution of reversible plasticity in stable environments.","authors":"Nicole Walasek, Karthik Panchanathan, Willem E Frankenhuis","doi":"10.1093/evlett/qraf015","DOIUrl":"10.1093/evlett/qraf015","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Reversible plasticity, i.e., the ability to deconstruct phenotypic specializations based on environmental conditions, is widespread in nature. Despite its ubiquity, few mathematical models have explored the evolutionary selection pressures that favor trait reversibility. Therefore, many scenarios remain to be examined. In particular, existing theory has modeled trait development as an instantaneous process. These models do not capture the fact that trait development is often a constructive process, in which phenotypes incrementally adjust to local ecologies. Here, we present an optimality model of the evolution of reversible plasticity in which organisms build traits incrementally. In our model, organisms repeatedly sample cues to infer the environmental state-which can vary between generations but not within generations-and incrementally tailor their phenotypes to match their environments. Organisms also have the option to deconstruct phenotypic adjustments. We investigate two different modes of phenotypic deconstruction: Organisms can either deconstruct phenotypic adjustments incrementally or completely deconstruct all phenotypic adjustments in one time period. We highlight two results. First, early-life sensitive periods in construction precede mid-ontogeny sensitive periods in deconstruction. Intriguingly, although organisms typically only deconstruct toward the end of ontogeny, environmental cues in mid-ontogeny have the strongest impact on deconstruction. Second, in contrast to previous models, we find that reversibility often evolves in environments that are stable within generations. Thus, our model shows that reversibility does not require environmental change during development-as long as organisms are initially uncertain about environmental conditions. Our model provides new insights into the capacity for reversibility in species that have evolved in ontogenetically stable environments.</p>","PeriodicalId":48629,"journal":{"name":"Evolution Letters","volume":"9 4","pages":"491-501"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12448235/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145114797","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}