Fig. 3: The evolution of phenotypic plasticity in cellular morphology.

The arrows point towards the qualitative direction of phenotypic plasticity. The lower and upper box hinges show the 25 and 75% quantiles, respectively; the thick horizontal band represents the median. The lower whisker denotes the smallest observation ≥ lower hinge − 1.5 × interquartile range; the upper whisker represents the largest observation ≤ upper hinge + 1.5 × interquartile range. Two-tailed t-tests (unequal variance across types): *P ≤ 0.05; **P ≤ 0.01; ***P ≤ 0.001; ****P ≤ 0.0001. See Supplementary Table S1 for statistical details (exact P values). The reversal of the ancestral cell perimeter plasticity (observed in eight out of 10 evolved clones) corresponded to the genetic assimilation of phenotypically plastic cell clustering (compare with Fig. 2b). All the plotted data are provided in the Source Data file. Also see Supplementary Fig. S6 for cell shape plasticity quantified in terms of cellular circularity.