When the optimal phenotype differs among environments, adaptive phenotypic plasticity can
evolve unless constraints impede such evolution. Costs and limits of plasticity have been …

Plants provide unique opportunities to study the mechanistic basis and evolutionary
processes of adaptation to diverse environmental conditions. Complementary laboratory …

Organisms are capable of an astonishing repertoire of phenotypic responses to the
environment, and these often define important adaptive solutions to heterogeneous and …

Plant architecture is optimized for the local light environment. In response to foliar shade or
neighbor proximity (low red to far-red light), some plant species exhibit shade-avoiding …

Why are some traits constitutive and others inducible? The term costs often appears in work
addressing this issue but may be ambiguously defined. This review distinguishes two …

Selection and plasticity are two mechanisms that allow the adaptation of a population to a
changing environment. Interaction between these nonexclusive mechanisms must be …

Background Accurate characterization of complex plant phenotypes is critical to assigning
biological functions to genes through forward or reverse genetics. It can also be vital in …

Abstract Background and Aims Polyploids are often hypothesized to have increased
phenotypic plasticity compared with their diploid progenitors, but recent work suggests that …

Plants may experience different environmental cues throughout their development which
interact in determining their phenotype. This paper tests the hypothesis that environmental …

Background and Aims The impact of a fruit tree's architecture on its performance is still under
debate, especially with regard to the definition of varietal ideotypes and the selection of …