Parental Care and Embryo Hatching PlasticityPhenotypic plasticity is the ability of a genotype to express different phenotypes to match variation in environmental conditions. For many species, hatching represents perhaps the most vulnerable life-history transition, which makes expressing the optimal hatching phenotype a crucial determinant of survival. The Majoris Lab is working to understand what environmental cues parents and their embryos use to determine the optimal time to hatch, and how plasticity in hatching time influences an individual's development, behavior, and dispersal potential during the larval phase.
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