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      A case for a joint strategy of diversified bet hedging and plasticity in the pea aphid wing polyphenism

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          Abstract

          Phenotypic plasticity and diversified bet hedging are strategies for coping with variable environments. Plasticity is favoured when an organism can predict future conditions using environmental cues, while bet hedging is favoured when predictive cues are not available. Theoretical analyses suggest that many organisms should use a mixture of both strategies, because environments often present both scenarios. Here, we examine if the pea aphid wing polyphenism, a well-known case of plasticity, is potentially a mixture of plasticity and bet hedging. In this polyphenism, asexual females produce more winged offspring in crowded conditions, and wingless offspring in uncrowded conditions. We find that pea aphids use plasticity to respond to crowding and we find considerable genetic variation for this response. We further show that individual aphids produce both winged and wingless offspring, consistent with the variability expected in a bet hedging trait. We conclude that the pea aphid wing polyphenism system is probably a mixture of plasticity and bet hedging. Our study adds to a limited list of empirical studies examining mixed strategy usage, and suggests that mixed strategies may be common in dispersal traits.

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          Author and article information

          Journal
          Biol Lett
          Biol. Lett
          RSBL
          roybiolett
          Biology Letters
          The Royal Society
          1744-9561
          1744-957X
          October 2016
          : 12
          : 10
          : 20160654
          Affiliations
          Department of Biology, University of Rochester , Rochester, NY 14627-0211, USA
          Author notes
          Author information
          http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4424-3237
          Article
          PMC5095200 PMC5095200 5095200 rsbl20160654
          10.1098/rsbl.2016.0654
          5095200
          28120801
          890e0c43-87d6-4acd-806d-d3989245168c
          © 2016 The Author(s)

          Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved.

          History
          : 8 August 2016
          : 27 September 2016
          Funding
          Funded by: National Institute of General Medical Sciences, http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000057;
          Award ID: R01GM116867
          Categories
          1001
          70
          Evolutionary Biology
          Custom metadata
          October, 2016

          phenotypic plasticity,bet hedging,environmental heterogeneity,dispersal polyphenism,pea aphid,adaptive coin-flipping

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