Speaker: Robert Croll
Candidate for Bachelor of Science in Biology
Time: 5:45 PM
Place: Trustee Hall 113
Supervisor: Dr. Allan Hook
Title: Is the Degree of Phenotypic Plasticity an Organism Displays Affected by Environment?

Abstract: Phenotypic plasticity is the ability of an organism’s phenotype to change while still having the same genotype. Traditionally most researchers thought that this was an inherited trait, with all individuals of a species having the same likelihood of expressing it. Recently, studies have shown that the amount of phenotypic plasticity that an organism is capable of expressing could be affected by their environment. This project gathered studies done on phenotypic plasticity and analyzed them to determine if this variability in phenotypic plasticity expression happens in nature. The results show that morphological phenotypic plasticity, and to a lesser extent behavioral plasticity, is a trait that varies, depending on the organism’s environment.