Mapping phenotypes: canalization, plasticity and developmental stability

“The study of phenotypic plasticity and GEI is complex because it requires the understanding of its underlying genetic variation, its liability to environmental conditions and its association with fitness (Via et al., 1995; Schlichting & Pigliucci, 1998; Debat & David, 2001).”

“Discrepancies between patterns of increased variance, evidenced by our analysis, and higher developmental stability, evidenced in previous studies on other hybrid mice (Alibert et al.1994, 1997), may appear surprising in the first place but may be the rule rather than an exception (Debat et al. 2000; Debat and David 2…”

“Fluctuating asymmetry (FA) and is considered to be a measure of developmental instability (DI), reflecting the inability of an individual to buffer its development against developmental noise [1-6].”

“…the unpredictable resource availability experienced by plants in xeric habitats may result in a greater range of plastic response compared to more mesic habitats with comparatively more predictable resource availability (Bradshaw 1965; Via et al. 1995; Debat and David 2001; Alpert and Simms 2002).”

“This seminal work inspired further conceptual progress, in particular about the distinction between robustness to environmental versus genetic perturbations [2].”

“…comes as no surprise since variation is one of the central topics in biology (Hallgrı́msson and Hall 2005), and both of these organismal properties are components of developmental buffering (Zakharov 1992) involved in determining the observed degree of phenotypic variation (Debat and David 2001).”

“This supports our third hypothesis and highlights that species living in harsher habitats with shorter growing seasons should show less plasticity or more narrow germination traits (Debat & David 2001).”

“In addition, canalization implies a trade-off where stability at one level may depend upon variability at another level [93].”

“The advantage of robustness is that it allows the individual to develop fundamental traits, independent of fluctuations in the environment (Debat and David, 2001).”

“Developmental instability is commonly measured by fluctuating asymmetry (FA), random deviations from perfect bilateral symmetry [9,10,11,12,13].”

“,[5–7]), due to stochasticity in cellular and molecular processes [4, 6].”

“Morphological variation has long been recognized as a crucial component of biological systems and natural selection (Debat & David 2001).”

“Developmental stability is maintained by an unknown set of mechanisms that buffer the phenotype against small random perturbations during development (Debat and David 2001).”

“Importantly, genetic variation for plasticity is common (Shama et al. 2011; Kivelä et al. 2012; Fischer and Karl 2010; De Jong et al. 2010).”

“This emphasis on genetic con-trol could result in trait canalization, potentially leading to reduced overall phenotypic adaptability (Debat et al. 2001; Klingenberg et al. 2019).”

“This supports the idea that genetic constraint and plasticity are related concepts [63] and can be connected by trait- or environment-dependent canalization: When one trait is canalized but another is not, the magnitudes of genetic constraint or GxE are altered [55].”

“In the ANOVAs, a significant cactus effect can be interpreted as a measure of phenotypic plasticity (Debat and David 2001; Conner and Hartl 2004; David et al. 2005).”

“Thus, development is always environmentally sensitive but its phenotypic outcome may not be. To describe such insensitivity of the phenotypic outcome to environmental (as well as mutational and stochastic) variation, many different terms have been used, including robustness, developmental stability, canalization or ho…”

“A useful perspective on the relationship between developmental instability and phenotypic plasticity is that they are a response to micro- and macroenvironmental perturbation, respectively.(4) An ongoing question in the study of variability is whether the same buffering mechanisms that regulate genetic variability als…”

“The variability in how physiological systems change or adapt to environmental conditions over time within or between individuals is often referred to as plasticity (Debat & David, 2001).”

“…plasticity or polymorphism—the ability of a given genotype to produce variable phenotypes in different environments (Stearns, 1989; Agrawal, 2001; Debat & David, 2001)— has recently emerged as an important target of study be- Correspondence: Hong-Xia Hua, College of Plant Science and…”

“Plasticity can also be non-adaptive if an organism is unable to respond suitably to environmental changes, e.g. if it is unable to maintain a constant phenotype in a changing environment (canalization; Debat and David, 2001).”

“Fig. 3). The notable conservation in this trait suggests some canalization (see review in Debat & David, 2001 ) in many species by maintaining the same developmental outcome despite the change in the traits involved.”

“Author for correspondence (email: cpk@manchester.ac.uk) The question of how phenotypic variation is regulated has attracted an increasing amount of attention in recent years (Debat and David 2001; Flatt 2005).”

“Unfortunately, while canalization is ubiquitous in nature [16, 31, 122], clear examples of canalization in computational simulations are rare [3, 6, 17, 33, 40, 43, 47, 61, 105, 109, 119, 123, 126], meaning that we lack a proper starting”

“It is easy to see how selection for countermeasures may lead to release or even amplify existing sources of stochastic variation, instead of buffering or correcting them through canalization processes (see Debat & David, 2001; Dworkin, 2005; Hiesinger & Hassan, 2018).”

“1c, d; Palmer 1994, Debat and David 2001, Santos et al. 2005).”

“For a volatile component Y, the canalization [C(Y )] is determined according to Debat and David (2001) as the inverse value of the mean of the within-localities values of the CV of Y: C Yð Þ ¼ n 1 .”

“Phenotypic plasticity can evolve as an adaptive response to variation in the environment when selection favors alternative phenotypes in different environments [4,5].”

“The three major processes involved in phenotypic variability are plasticity, canalisation and developmental stability [15].”

“…of the genetic component of total variance, as all flies were raised under identical conditions, thus, minimizing the effect of environmental variation; a significant cactus effect might be interpreted as phenotypic plasticity (Debat & David, 2001; Conner & Hartl, 2004; David et al., 2005).”

“Canalization results in decreased variance in trait expression across the population, whereas developmental stability limits variation of trait expression within individuals (Debat and David 2001; Lazic et al. 2016).”

“Karan et al., 1999; Wang & Tsai, 2000; see also Debat & David, 2001, for a recent review of the concepts and usage of canalization, plasticity and developmental stability).”

“Une structure telle que le complexe visuel ne serait plus soumis à une canalisation, processus induisant la réduction de la variabilité inter-individuelle et de la stabilité de développement [15].”

“Developmental instability is usually estimated using fl uctuating asymmetry (FA; van Valen, 1962; Debat and David, 2001 ).”

“of gene flow, as a response to resolve problems of food availability (Herring 1993, Wood and Lieberman 2001, Debat and David 2001, Kingsolver et al. 2002, Piersma and Drent 2003, Lieberman et al. 2004).”

“…thus drive the evolution of canalization (de Visser et al., 2003), broadly defined as the propensity of a genotype to produce a stable phenotype (Debat & David, 2001), although some models suggest that strong canalization may be an inevitable property of complex developmental systems (Siegal &…”

“Seeds of widely distributed flora are expected to have broad thermal tolerance ranges (eurythermy) to match the breadth of climatic conditions across their distributions, while rangerestricted congenerics are expected to be thermally specialized (stenothermy; Debat and David, 2001; Ghalambor et al., 2007).”

“Some organisms may employ a mechanism termed canalization, through which they achieve a consistent phenotype regardless of the stress imposed by the environment (Waddington, 1942; Debat and David, 2001).”

“They call such an ability ‘developmental stability’, but I will refer to it as ‘stationarity’, as the former term is frequently used to refer to robustness to developmental noise (Debat & David, 2001; Forde, 2009).”

“Genetic differences in environmental sensitivity or ‘phenotypic plasticity’ (Debat & David 2001) are known as gene-by-environment interactions (Pigliucci 2005), and recent work has identified single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with variation in developmental risk or resilience…”

“Our working definition is that canalization is “the property of a developmental process of being to some extent modifiable, but to some extent resistant to modification” (Waddington 1961; Debat and David 2001).”

“The lack of developmental plasticity, also termed developmental canalization (Debat and David, 2001), implies that irreversibly altering these traits for repeated air exposure may result in a costly phenotype–environment mismatch when fish spend time in water.”

“Fluctuating asymmetry (FA) is the most frequently used measure of developmental stability (Klingenberg and McIntyre, 1998; Debat and David, 2001).”

“The rationale underlying the canalization hypothesis is that selection reduces maladaptive variation by evolving modifiers to suppress the effects of genetic variants producing effects in maladaptive directions (Wilkins 1997;Wagner et al. 1997; Debat and David 2001).”

“Indeed, such robustness of life-history traits is observed in natural systems (Forcada et al., 2008; Liefting & Ellers, 2008), and depending on the context, this has been referred to as buffering, environmental canalization or developmental stability (Debat & David, 2001; Masel & Siegal, 2009).”

“As such, phenotypic plasticity and canalization describe different facets of the same phenomenon: the sensitivity of phenotype to the environment (Debat and David 2001).”

“Phenotypic plasticity can be defined generally as the property of a genotype to produce different phenotypes depending upon environmental variation [see Debat & David (2001) for further detail].”

“FA should reflect the capacity of an individual to produce the closest perfect symmetrical phenotype whatever the stress encountered during its development (Palmer and Strobeck 1992; Clarke 1993; Palmer 1994; van Dongen and Lens 2000; Debat and David 2001).”

“Although the distinction between the different regulatory mechanisms is somewhat blurred and is still subject to debate [4, 5], canalization and developmental stability are often considered as evolutionary processes acting at two different levels of regulation [4, 6, 7].”

“By contrast, levels of FA are often lower under controlled conditions [62], and the increase in FA in stressful conditions is indicative of a lesser developmental stability, meaning that males are challenged during their development, which leads to deviations from perfect symmetry between each side [84].”

“Thus, a lower allometric coefficient for a larval trait implies a stronger environmental canalization (sensu Debat and David 2001) on its development.”

“Social buffering is therefore expected to reduce selective pressures for canalization, i.e. the mechanisms that keep the phenotype constant in spite of genetic or environmental variation (see Debat and David 2001 for a review of the definitions of canalization).”

“…explore the extent to which canalization, plasticity, and developmental stability—major processes involved in the regulation of phenotypic variation (Debat and David 2001)—are responsible for changes or lack thereof in the rank order of RILs for lint yield and other fiber-related traits between…”

“This may explain why little evidence exists for the correlations between canalization and plasticity (Debat et al., 2009; Dworkin, 2005), despite they are hypothesized to be controlled under some common mechanisms (Debat & David, 2001; Meiklejohn & Hartl, 2002).”

“Reaction norms cannot be said a priori to be adaptive or maladaptive, so one should begin with a phenomenological description by plotting phenotypic values along the environmental axis of interest (Debat and David 2001).”

“Furthermore, it has been recently suggested that selection linked to thermoregulation properties could also influence the degree of melanization in insects (Clusella-Trullas et al. 2007).These results might thus reflect weak environmental canalization in wing morphology (Wagner et al. 1997, Debat and David 2001 ), whi…”