Ecology and micro-evolution of coastal marine invertebrates

植物和动物在其活动范围的不同部分往往具有不同的形态、行为和生理特征。表型的这种地理差异通常与生态条件的变化相关，包括其他生物的存在和流行，并似乎赋予种群更好的利用或承受环境变化的能力。如果在不同的环境中选择不同的基因类型(即达尔文选择)，或者如果给定的基因类型对环境变化产生不同的表型(即表型可塑性)，则可能会出现这种适应性和非随机(相对于环境)的表型变异。进化生物学家使用理论方法，询问什么条件应该有利于这些不同的进化轨迹，但相对较少的实证研究来验证他们的预测。

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.