The genetic basis of coordinated plasticity across functional units in a Lake Malawi cichlid mapping population

Adaptive radiations are often stereotypical, as populations repeatedly specialize along conserved environmental axes. Phenotypic plasticity may be similarly stereotypical, as individuals respond to environmental cues. These parallel patterns of variation, which are often consistent across traits, have led researchers to propose that plasticity can facilitate predictable patterns of evolution along environmental gradients. This “flexible stem” model of evolution raises questions about the genetic nature of plasticity, including how complex is the genetic basis for plasticity? Is plasticity across traits mediated by many distinct loci, or few “global” regulators? To address these questions, we reared a hybrid cichlid mapping population on alternate diet regimes mimicking an important environmental axis. We show that plasticity across an array of ecologically relevant traits is generally morphologically integrated, such that traits respond in a coordinated manner, especially those with overlapping function. Our genetic data are more ambiguous. While our mapping experiment provides little evidence for global genetic regulators of plasticity, these data do contain a genetic signal for the integration of plasticity across traits. Overall, our data suggest a compromise between genetic modularity, whereby plasticity may evolve independently across traits, and low level but widespread genetic integration, establishing the potential for plasticity to experience coordinated evolution.