Meeting Abstract

S10.3  Tuesday, Jan. 6  Plasticity in breeding time in wild vertebrates: a quantitative genetic approach NUSSEY, D.H.; Institute of Evolutionary Biology, University of Edinburgh dan.nussey@ed.ac.uk

There is abundant evidence from wild vertebrate populations for strong relationships between climatic variation and the timing of breeding, but these effects are typically assessed only at the population level. Such effects are usually presumed to be the result of individual altering their breeding phenology in response to climate conditions (i.e. phenotypic plasticity). In iteroparous species, individuals breed repeatedly across their lifetimes and may vary in the way they respond to climate variation. We currently know little about the prevalence, and evolutionary and ecological causes and consequences of variation in phenotypic plasticity in the wild. In this talk, I will briefly outline an analytical framework to assess the between-individual variation in life history plasticity that may underlie population-level responses to the environment at both phenotypic and genetic levels. This framework utilizes the reaction norm concept and random regression statistical models. Using examples of recent applications of the framework, from long-term individual-based studies of wild vertebrate populations, I will illustrate how both natural selection and ecological constraint may alter a population’s response to the environment over time. These examples highlight the need consider variation in breeding time at the individual level in studies of natural populations.