SARKAR, S: Evolutionary Models of Phenotypic Plasticity and Reaction Norms: A History

This paper is a history of attempts to model the evolution of phenotypic plasticity and the norm of reaction with an emphasis on quantitative models (starting in the late 1970s). Optimization, quantitative genetic and explicit genetic models are all treated. It is argued that the persistent difficulties in providing adequate models reflects the fact that none of these modeling strategies explicitly target the genotype-phenotype relationship. At the most fundamental level they analyze dynamics entirely at the phenotypic level (in the optimization models) or at the genotypic level (the other two types of model). It is suggested that modeling evolution in phenotypic space, but including genotypic dynamics, have a better chance of providing a quantitative account of the evolution of reaction norms and phenotypic plasticity.