It Gets Complicated

    Phenotypic plasticity is an organism's ability to change its phenotype, or anatomical trait, in response to environmental conditions. Plasticity allows these organisms to better adapt to constantly changing environments, helping them survive and reproduce even in new conditions. While the phenotype may change, the genotype encoding the trait does not. An example of this can be seen in arctic foxes who have a brown coat in the summer and a white coat in the winter, allowing them to better blend in with their environment as it changes. 

    To test if a trait might be plastic, you must first determine which environmental factor influences the trait. You could then have a control and several experimental groups exposed to different conditions to activate the phenotypic change. If you wanted to test if the fur change in arctic foxes is an example of phenotypic plasticity, you could put some foxes in various environments of different colors and temperatures. 

    As we change the environment, we can see that only in the cold and snowy environment does the foxes' fur change to white, meaning it is safe to assume this particular environment triggers the plasticity of the phenotype expressing their fur color.