Temporal dynamics and adaptiveness of thermal phenotypic plasticity in a ciliate.

ABSTRACT: Phenotypic plasticity is a widespread strategy used by organisms to cope with environmental fluctuations. Empirical studies have mostly focused on describing the amplitude of phenotypic change through reaction norms, which ignore the temporal dynamics of plasticity. Although the speed of plastic responses has recurrently been predicted to modulate their adaptiveness, it remains largely understudied. Here, we retraced the time course of plasticity across four traits in 12 isogenic strains of the ciliate Tetrahymena thermophila to test how the temporal dynamics of plasticity mediate its adaptiveness under fluctuations. We decomposed plastic responses into 3 parameters: a lag and a rate describing their temporal dimension and the canonical plastic capacity. All showed high intraspecifi

SUBMITTER: Dupont L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12676462 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature