Nussey Daniel H, Clutton-Brock Tim H, Albon Steve D, Pemberton Josephine, Kruuk Loeske E B
Institute of Evolutionary Biology, University of Edinburgh, Kings Buildings, West Mains Road, Edinburgh EH9 3JT, UK.
Biol Lett. 2005 Dec 22;1(4):457-60. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2005.0352.
Influences of climate on life history traits in natural populations are well documented. However, the implications of between-individual variation in phenotypic plasticity underlying observed trait-environment relationships are rarely considered due to the large, long-term datasets required for such analysis. Studies typically present correlations of annual trait means with climate or assume that individual phenotypic responses are constant. Here, we examine this additional level of variation and show that, in a red deer population on the Isle of Rum, Scotland, changes in climate generate changes in phenotype only amongst individuals who have experienced favourable ecological conditions. Examination of relationships between offspring birth weight and spring temperature within the lifetimes of individual females revealed that the tendency to respond to climate declined as the population density experienced early in life increased. The presence of such systematic variation in individual plasticity is rarely documented in the wild, and has important implications for our understanding of the environmental dependencies of traits under varying ecological conditions.
气候对自然种群生活史特征的影响已有充分记载。然而，由于进行此类分析需要大量长期数据集，所以很少考虑观察到的性状与环境关系背后个体间表型可塑性的差异。研究通常呈现年度性状均值与气候的相关性，或者假设个体的表型反应是恒定的。在这里，我们研究了这一额外的变异水平，并表明，在苏格兰拉姆岛的一个马鹿种群中，气候的变化只会在经历过有利生态条件的个体中引起表型变化。对个体雌性一生中后代出生体重与春季温度之间关系的研究表明，随着生命早期经历的种群密度增加，对气候作出反应的倾向会下降。个体可塑性中这种系统变异在野外很少被记录，并且对我们理解不同生态条件下性状的环境依赖性具有重要意义。
