Figure 1.

Summarized diagram of the relationships between the environment, cues and phenotypes in the framework of phenotypic plasticity. The multivariate environment can be used as a cue to initiate a plastic response in an individual (thin black arrows). The focal phenotype (on which selection is acting in our example, black thunderbolt) can be affected by current environmental conditions, earlier life events and the preceding parental generation. Information about past environments (either parental or from early-life) includes different sources, such as the phenotype itself (at the same or another trait), or epigenetics. For phenotypic plasticity to be adaptive, cues in the successive periods and generations have to be correlated with the future selective environment (white arrows).