Theoretical and experimental studies have provided evidence for a positive role of phenotype resistance to genetic mutation in enhancing long-term adaptation to novel environments. With the aim of contributing to an understanding of the origin and evolution of phenotypic robustness to genetic mutations in organismal systems, we adopted a theoretical approach, elaborating on a classical mathematical formalizations of evolutionary dynamics, the quasispecies model. We show that a certain level of phenotypic robustness is not only a favourable condition for adaptation to occur, but also a required condition for short-term adaptation in most real organismal systems. This appears as a threshold effect, i.e. as a minimum level of phenotypic robustness (critical robustness) below which evolutionary adaptation cannot consistently occur or be maintained, even in the case of sizably selection coefficients and in the absence of any drift effect. These results, are in agreement with the observed pervasiveness of robustness at different levels of biological organization, from molecules to whole organisms.

中文翻译：

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表型鲁棒性对自适应进化动力学的影响

理论和实验研究为表型抗基因突变在增强对新环境的长期适应性方面发挥了积极作用提供了证据。为了有助于理解生物系统中基因突变对表型鲁棒性的起源和进化，我们采用了一种理论方法，阐述了进化动力学的经典数学形式化，即准物种模型。。我们表明，一定水平的表型鲁棒性不仅是适应发生的有利条件，而且还是大多数实际生物系统中短期适应的必要条件。这表现为阈值效应，即最小水平的表型鲁棒性（临界鲁棒性），即使在选择系数相当大且没有任何漂移效应的情况下，也不能始终如一地发生或维持进化适应。这些结果与在从分子到整个生物的不同生物组织水平上观察到的健壮性的普遍性相一致。