Among the unresolved topics in evolutionary biology and behavioral
ecology are the origins, mechanisms, evolution, and consequences of
developmental and phenotypic diversity. In an attempt to address these
challenges, plasticity has been investigated empirically and
theoretically at all levels of biological organization-from biochemical
to whole organism and beyond to the population, community, and ecosystem
levels. Less commonly explored are constraints (e.g., ecological), costs
(e.g., increased response error), perturbations (e.g., alterations in
selection intensity), and stressors (e.g., resource limitation)
influencing not only selective values of heritable phenotypic components
but, also, decisions and choices (not necessarily conscious ones)
available to individuals in populations. Treating extant mammals, the
primary purpose of the proposed work is to provide new perspectives on
common themes in the literature on robustness ("functional diversity";
differential resistance to "deconstraint" of conserved elements) and
weak robustness (the potential to restrict plasticity and evolvability),
plasticity (variation expressed throughout the lifetimes of individuals
in a population setting "evolvability potential"), and evolvability
(non-lethal phenotypic novelties induced by endogenous and/or exogenous
stimuli). The proposed project will place particular emphasis upon the
adaptive complex in relation to endogenous (e.g., genomes,
neurophysiology) and exogenous (abiotic and biotic, including social
environments) organismal features discussed as regulatory and
environmental perturbations with the potential to induce, and, often,
constrain variability and novelty of form and function
