Adaptation to Temporally Fluctuating Environments by the Evolution of Maternal Effects
Fig 8
Deterministic maternal effects may underlie adaptation to a wide range of temporally fluctuating environments.
Expected adaptation of the predictable populations at generation 60 relative to the ancestor state (zero line) if they were to face all possible fluctuating sequences of normoxia and anoxia for 12 generations (see Materials and Methods). Data is jittered along the x-axis for clarity. Each circle shows adaptation to one environmental sequence, with the dark-blue-to-cyan gradient depicting increasing frequency of normoxia generations and black circles representing sequences in which normoxia and anoxia generations are equally represented. With the exception of environmental sequences with predominant anoxia, predictable populations would adapt to a wide range of fluctuating environments due to the previous evolution of deterministic maternal effects and correlated fitness benefits.