The World Is Not Flat: Accounting for the Dynamic Nature of the Environment as We Move Beyond Static Experimental Manipulations

Although we have long understood that environmental variation affects both physiology and behavior, historically, most studies have limited or simplified environmental variation to focus more directly on traits of interest. Recently, a number of investigators have turned their focus toward attempting to incorporate such variation into studies of physiology and behavior, and not surprisingly, are finding that the results from studies that include more realistic variation, both from the environment as well as in physiological processes within individuals, can differ substantially from those of studies that attempt to hold the parameters constant. Understanding the role that this dynamic variation plays in shaping phenotypes is critical given that, under most predictions from future climate change models, increased variability in factors such as temperature and rainfall are predicted.