Steering Before Selection: Energy-Limited Developmental Control as a Phenotypic Capacitor, a Pre-Specified Simulation Study

Energy-limited developmental control in an individual-based simulation is linked to concealed genetic variation, with selection taking over 340–450 generations after a permanent environmental change.

• Why it matters: The work addresses whether fast, energy-cost developmental regulation steers evolutionary change or instead buffers it, and how energy constraints shape the balance between control and selection.
• What they did: After a permanent environmental shift, sensing absorbed it in ~25 generations, then selection alone drove gene takeover 340–450 generations later across 22 pre-specified simulation versions and a replication on 20 new seeds.
• The result: Control concealed harmful load, hiding 3–6× more than no control; releasing it helped only when control re-locked, yielding mean fitness 0.103 vs 0.122 without reversal and 0.632 vs 0.489 at 2,000 with reversal.

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