"One idea is that organisms are equipped with the flexibility to change their physical or other features during development to accommodate environmental changes , a phenomenon called phenotypic plasticity . The change typically does n't show up in the genes . For instance , in social bees , both the workers and guards have the same genomes but different genes get activated to give them distinct behaviors and appearances . Environmental factors , such as temperature and embryonic diet , prompt genetic activity that ends up casting one bee a worker and the other a guard . If beneficial , this flexibility could be passed on to offspring and so can lead to the evolution of new features in a species . '' This plasticity is heritable , and natural selection can favor different kinds of plasticity , depending on the range of environmental conditions the organism encounters , `` Pigliucci said ."
"Bertvan : Endogenous Adaptive Mutagenesis proposes that living individual organisms , not their genomes , respond to internal and environmental challenges , intelligently and purposefully , that such adaptations are inherited epigenetically , as they develop , and the phenotype only instigates a reorganization of its genome to reflect such adaptations if they persistent over many generations ."
"features during development to accommodate environmental changes , a phenomenon called phenotypic plasticity"
"and environmental challenges , intelligently and purposefully , that such adaptations"