Environmental variation is ubiquitous. Learning and phenotypic plasticity play a crucial role in allowing organisms to cope with such variation. Understanding why organisms vary in the degree of plasticity is important to predicting how species will respond to human-induced environmental change, such as global warming, the spread of non-native species, and habitat conversion. My research focuses on the idea that the developmental mechanism of plasticity determines the costs and constraints of plasticity. Taking a developmental approach yields important insights into understanding the evolutionary conditions favoring plasticity.
