Adaptive Phenotypic Plasticity in Response to Climate Change in a Wild Bird Population
Anne Charmantier,1,2
Robin H. McCleery,1
Lionel R. Cole,1
Chris Perrins,1
Loeske E. B. Kruuk,3
Ben C. Sheldon1*
Rapid climate change has been implicated as a cause of evolution in poorly adapted populations. However, phenotypic plasticity provides the potential for organisms to respond rapidly and effectively to environmental change. Using a 47-year population study of the great tit (Parus major) in the United Kingdom, we show that individual adjustment of behavior in response to the environment has enabled the population to track a rapidly changing environment very closely. Individuals were markedly invariant in their response to environmental variation, suggesting that the current response may be fixed in this population. Phenotypic plasticity can thus play a central role in tracking environmental change; understanding the limits of plasticity is an important goal for future research.
1 Edward Grey Institute, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PS, UK.
2 Centre d'Ecologie Fonctionelle et Evolutive, Unité Mixte de Recherche CNRS 5175, 1919 Route de Mende, 34293 Montpellier Cedex 5, France.
3 Institute of Evolutionary Biology, School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3JT, UK.
Deceased.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: ben.sheldon{at}zoo.ox.ac.uk
