Aladaptation. Longer sampling periods emerged when cues were moderately informative, but not when they were highly or weakly informative. Finally, in a recent theoretical study optimal plasticity trajectories were analysed throughout the lifetime with organisms having full flexibility to repeatedly adjust their phenotype to one environment or reverse these specialisations to adapt to an alternative environment [60]. Organisms can sample and track the environmental states at different ages until death. All optimal reaction norms of phenotypic plasticity turned out to have a characteristic shape, which entails a broad region where after an environmental switch no or little phenotypic adjustments are made. This “plateau” of the reaction norm causes time lags of plastic responses as an emergent feature of the model. This suggests that response lags in phenotypic adjustment can be part of an optimal strategy rather than being caused by constraints. These response lags only vanish when plasticity costs are PubMed ID:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27484364 zero. Several common patterns were observed in a majority of model environments. (i) Typically there was an early-life peak of phenotypic adjustments once young individuals had BAY 11-7085 cost accumulated sufficient environmental information. (ii) Then, after a period of reduced plasticity, a second, broader peak of plasticity follows in response to environmental changes during life time. (iii) Plastic adjustments at the end of life were rare, because the costs for such adjustments have to be paid, while the benefits are unlikely to be reaped before death. These results may at least partly explain the existence of multiple sensitive windows observed in empirical studies. In summary, the reviewed models suggest that selection does not only favour an early single sensitive window with organizing effects, but also reversible plasticity under certain conditions, lagged responses to environmental change and multiple windows of enhancedGroothuis and Taborsky Frontiers in Zoology 2015, 12(Suppl 1):S6 http://www.frontiersinzoology.com/content/12/S1/SPage 9 ofplasticity during lifetime. The latter requires extended periods of time when organisms are sensitive to environmental cues. Extended sensitivity in combination with lagged responses open the possibility that organisms collect environmental information during multiple periods in life before they show a phenotypic response that integrates the different information they had collected. In the following sections we examine the ways how animals integrate information from different life stages when mounting plastic responses during development.Interactions between mother and offspringthat the direct social experience had fully reversed initial, maternal influences on behaviour [26].Interactions between early and late environmentIn almost all research on prenatal maternal effects it is assumed that the embryo is just a slave of the mother in responding to maternal provisioning. In the human literature it is, however, well established that there is mutual exchange of substances such as hormones between mother and embryo affecting and manipulating each other in their own interest [19]. This substantially complicates the study of development. This is much easier in oviparous species in which the scope for interaction between embryo and mother is very limited after oviposition and can further be reduced by artificial incubation. There is recent evidence that in such species the embryo plays an important role, too. For ex.
