Summary |
Ecological developmental biology studies
how an ecological factor (e.g. temperature)
can have an effect
on development (e.g. of
sex in reptiles). As a subcategory, Ecological
Developmental Biology can be considered to be continuous with Evolutionary-Developmental
Biology, as eco-evo-devo but will
include only those papers that concentrate
on the role of ecological variation in guiding development and evolution. The distinctive
phenomenon studied is ecologically-coupled phenotypic plasticity: either a
reaction norm (variation in expression of the phenotype caused by ecological variation)
or polyphenism (multiple discrete phenotypes triggered by different
environmental conditions). |