|
The capacity of an organism to change its form in response to varying environmental conditions. For example, a plant transferred outside from a warm poorly lit greenhouse may produce smaller paler leaves and shorter in-ternodes. Such changes can only occur in new tissues and the existing mature parts of the plant remain unchanged. In taxonomic work it is important to establish how plastic a particular character can be before placing too much reliance on it. It is also necessary in breeding work to establish what proportion of variation is caused by phenotypic plasticity.
|
