Phenotypic plasticity, the ability of an organism to change its characteristics with changes in the environment, is an important mechanism by which populations can survive and flourish. Especially in our time, where human-induced environmental changes occur all around the globe, it is important to understand how populations can produce different characters from the same genetic code to deal with these environmental changes. Additionally, our understanding of how this ability evolved is still limited. My goal is to clarify 1.) what are the mechanisms that allow populations to change (i.e., to show plasticity) and 2.) how does this ability evolve? A very common aquarium fish, the guppy, offers a great opportunity to resolve these questions because they are easy to keep, reproduce quickly and have a proven ability to show plasticity in a large number of traits. My reserch will be conducted at the Institute of Biotechnology at the Helsinki Institute of Life Science.

2025

2029