Developmental plasticity

Developmental plasticity is the capacity of a single genotype to produce different phenotypes in response to different environmental conditions. It is not a failure of genetic determination but an evolved adaptive strategy: organisms that can adjust their development to local conditions outperform those locked into a single phenotype. The mechanisms range from hormone-mediated thresholds to alternative developmental pathways triggered by temperature, nutrition, or social cues. Plasticity is the raw material of genetic assimilation: the environment reveals what the genome can build, and selection fixes what the environment has revealed. The modern synthesis treated plasticity as noise; evolutionary developmental biology treats it as a creative force.