Speaker
Description
There is well-established theory exploring the conditions in which phenotypic plasticity is favoured by natural selection over non-plastic development. However, most of this work has assumed a two-stage life history: organisms sample a cue, or they don’t sample, relying instead on inherited information; and then develop a phenotype, either instantaneously or after a time lag. Recent modeling has conceptualized development as a sequential decision-making process, in which organisms learn about their environments and incrementally tailor their phenotypes. This representation of ontogeny, as unfolding, has created scope for new questions: In which conditions should we expect organisms to sample more or less at different times in their lives? When does natural selection favour sensitive periods (windows of heightened plasticity)? How do trajectories of skills development depend on environmental conditions across evolution and ontogeny? To date, this line of work has nearly exclusively explored ‘games against nature’. In this talk, we briefly describe this line of work and discuss ways in which it may be extended to include ‘games against others’; that is, development in a frequency-dependent context.
