The Concept of Morphoniche in Evolutionary Ecology

—The evolutionary-ecological concept of morphoniche is proposed where the morphoniche is regarded as part of the multidimensional ecological niche that characterizes the limits of phenotypic plasticity of individuals, cenopopulations, and taxocenes in the morphospace. The phenome—a morphofunctional “shell” of an individual—is the basic part of its ecological niche and a multifunctional “biological tool” allowing the individual to perform its generative, trophic, and environment-forming functions in the population and community. The phenome characterizes the morphophysiological habitus of an individual and serves as its personal morphoniche. Geometric morphometrics makes it possible to bring into correlation the locations of individual morphoniches in the common morphospace and evaluate coupled morphogenetic reactions of individuals to changes in aut- and synecological factors. The epigenetic system of a population parameterizes the potential morphospace, delimiting the fan of possible invariants of morphogenesis. The volume of population morphospace reflects morphogenetic reactions of a population to the range of local ecological factors and allows estimation of its realized morphoniche. An analysis of realized morphoniches over many years provides an estimate of the potential population morphoniche. Part of the community (taxocene) comprising cenopopulations of closely related sympatric species provides a model of the cenotic morphoniche. The ratios between the volumes of realized and potential morphoniches make it possible to evaluate the adaptive modification potential and optimality index of the realized morphoniches of individuals, cenopopulations, and taxocenes, the limits of their phenotypic plasticity, and the risk of an evolutionary-ecological crisis.