Evolutionary History Mediates Population Response to Rapid Environmental Change through Within-Generational and Transgenerational Plasticity

Rapid environmental change is affecting many organisms; some are coping well, but many species are in decline. A key mechanism for facilitating success following environmental change is phenotypic plasticity. Organisms use cues to respond phenotypically to environmental conditions; many incorporate recent information (within-generation plasticity) and information from previous generations (transgenerational plasticity). We extend an existing evolutionary model where organisms utilize within-generational plasticity, transgenerational plasticity, and bet hedging to include changes in environmental regime. We show how when rapid evolution of plasticity is not possible, the effect of environmental change (altering the environment mean, variance, or autocorrelation or cue reliability) on population growth rate depends on the population’s evolutionary history and past evolutionary responses to historical environmental conditions. We then evaluate the predictions that populations adapted to highly variable environments or with greater within-generational plasticity are more likely to successfully respond to environmental change. We identify when these predictions fail and show that environmental change is most detrimental when previously reliable cues become unreliable. When multiple cues become unreliable, environmental change can cause deleterious effects regardless of the population’s evolutionary history. Overall, this work provides a general framework for understanding the role of plasticity in population responses to rapid environmental change.