Phenotypic Plasticity

 Phenotypic Plasticity is the ability of an organism to change their phenotype in relation to the environment that they are in. 

In the paper "The Genetic Basis of Adaptation following Plastic Changes in Coloration in a Novel Environment" a study was done on lizards that live on these lava rocks. The lizards living on the dark lava rocks have a dark phenotype that enables them to blend into the rocks. These researches found that when you remove these lizards from the dark rocks and place them on a much lighter substrate, then these lizards become much lighter in color in order to blend in with the substrate. They also compared the lizards already living on the lava rocks to lizards nearby who were living off of the lava rocks. They found that when exposed to the dark colored substrate that both groups of lizards had a much darker phenotype, however, the researchers observed that the lizards already living on the lava rocks had darker phenotype than the off lava lizards. When both of these groups were placed on a lighter background both groups showed the same degree of lightness in their phenotype.

These researches also hypothesized that this species of lizard has been able to match their phenotype to their substrate before the lava rocks even got to that location.