Ecology and micro-evolution of coastal marine invertebrates

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Plants and animals often have different morphological, behavioural and physiological traits in different parts of their range. This geographic variation in phenotype is often correlated with variation in ecological conditions, including presence and prevalence of other organisms, and appears to confer populations with improved capacity to exploit or withstand environmental variability. Such adaptive and non-random (with respect to environment) phenotypic variation may arise if different genotypes are selected in different environments (i.e., Darwinian selection), or if given genotypes produce different phenotypes in response to environmental variation (i.e., phenotypic plasticity). Using theoretical approaches, evolutionary biologists have asked what conditions should favour these different evolutionary trajectories, but relatively little empirical research has been done to test their predictions.