Abstract Gómez et al. (2025) called for consistency in the approaches to quantifying plastic responses, concluding that plasticity studies need to track genotypes (or proxies) to be meaningful. We do not agree that tracking genotypes is required, nor that excluding genotypes results from a misconception of how some researchers understand phenotypic plasticity. In addition, requiring that we track genotypes would create significant constraints on plasticity research that examines plasticity in many non‐model organisms as well as plasticity at the levels of populations and species across a phylogeny. While quantifying genetic variation is a valuable endeavour, it is not a requirement for studying plasticity at any level. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.
Relyea et al. (2026) studied this question.