A development model integrating thermal evolution and plasticity to adapt to natural thermal environments

As a key biological process, development has been widely measured using laboratory populations under constant temperatures. However, these measurements may differ from natural reality due to the effects of rapid evolution and unnatural constant regimes, which have not been considered in the developmental models. Here, we experimentally measured the developmental time of laboratory and field populations of a global aphid pest at 9 constant and 9 fluctuating temperatures to quantify these two effects, constructed a new developmental model incorporating these two processes, and validated and applied new model in 3 representative fields. We found that evolutionary effect was more pronounced under constant than under fluctuating regimes. Ignoring the evolutionary and thermal plasticity effects may overestimate the annual generations. Our new model accurately predicted developmental rate and annual generations using commonly available temperature datasets, and provided a template for a new temperature-dependent developmental model incorporating evolutionary and plasticity effects for ectotherms.