The Evolution of Plasticity and Nonplastic Spatial and Temporal Adaptations in the Presence of Imperfect Environmental Cues

evolving according to standard quantitative genetic theory. In contrast to previous theoretical models, as the rate of migration between demes or the rate of cyclic fluctuations in the optimum increases, the amount of plasticity Formula: see text at equilibrium is shown to increase gradually, in part accounting for the effect of reduced nonplastic adaptation and reaching a maximum equal to the squared correlation between the environmental cue and the phenotypic optimum. Given that information available to the organism is limited, this bias of the expressed phenotype toward the global optimum is still optimal, however, in a certain decision-theoretic sense. When genetic variation in the plastic component of the trait is small so that spatial or temporal differentiation in plasticity is small, the effect of plasticity on nonplastic adaptation is to reduce the effects of variation in the phenotypic optimum by a factor Formula: see text only. Information acquisition costs and joint evolution of sensory systems are discussed.