bio

Phenotypic plasticity

The capacity of one genome to produce different bodies depending on the conditions it grows up in. Unlike acclimatization, these changes usually happen inside a narrow developmental window in childhood and then stay: the deeper chest of a child raised at high altitude is one example. Gislén and colleagues found that Moken children of the Andaman Sea saw twice as sharply underwater as European children — and then in 2006 European children given a month of practice matched them exactly, and kept it for months. Nothing was inherited. A growing body was simply shaped by what it did.