The Fitness of Manipulating Phenotypes: Implications for Studies of Fluctuating Asymmetry and Multivariate Selection

Phenotypic manipulation (or phenotypic engineering) that alters trait distributions provides a way to increase the statistical power of detecting relationships between traits and fitness. Manipulations relying on plastic responses, however, assume a specific relationship between the perturbation and the alteration of the traits when multiple traits are involved. We measured several traits, including condition measured as fluctuating asymmetry, in the ladybird beetle Harmonia axyridis under six different diets to examine how altered environments affected multiple traits and their distributions. Although diet affected fluctuating asymmetry, we found no consistent relationship between degree of asymmetry and other phenotypic measures. As expected, individual traits were altered by our treatments. Contrary to expectation, relationships among traits were not constant among diets. Our results suggest that assumptions about the relationship between condition and trait values, especially fluctuating asymmetry, cannot be made. Further, studies that use manipulated phenotypes to statistically determine the form of selection must first demonstrate that the pattern of the phenotypic correlation matrix is not itself altered by the manipulation. If the phenotypic correlation matrix is not constant, then experimental estimates of selection coefficients may not reflect selection that occurs in the wild.