Table 2.

GRN models (partly) supporting plasticity-led evolution

Criterion	Relevant notions	Existing results	Prospective work	References
Adaptive plastic response in novel environments	Environment-as-inducer, Environment-as-selector, plastic response, robustness	Emergence of novel phenotype in novel environments	Correlation between environment-as-inducer and environment-as-selector	Watson et al. (2014)
Uncovering of cryptic mutations under large environmental change	Environment-as-inducer, plastic response, robustness	Evolutionary capacitance and expression of cryptic mutations under stress	Breakdown point of robustness	Bergman and Siegal (2003) and Espinosa-Soto et al. (2011b)
Change in regulation or form	(Change in) robustness, environment-as-selector	Change in robustness alongside increased fitness over evolution	Change in GRN structures accompanying adaptation	Wagner (1996) and Nagata and Kikuchi (2020)
Adaptive refinement	Fitness, environment-as-selector	Evolutionary algorithms trivially increase fitness	Refinement of GRN parameters	Wagner (1996) and Espinosa-Soto et al. (2011a)