  Phenotypic plasticity and its evolution may help evolutionary rescue in a
novel and stressful environment, especially if environmental novelty reveals
cryptic genetic variation that enables the evolution of increased plasticity.
However, the environmental stochasticity ubiquitous in natural systems may
alter these predictions because high plasticity may amplify
phenotype-environment mismatches. Although previous studies have highlighted
this potential detrimental effect of plasticity in stochastic environments,
they have not investigated how it affects extinction risk in the context of
evolutionary rescue and with evolving plasticity. We investigate this question
here by integrating stochastic demography with quantitative genetic theory in a
model with simultaneous change in the mean and predictability (temporal
autocorrelation) of the environment. We develop an approximate prediction of
long-term persistence under the new pattern of environmental fluctuations, and
compare it with numerical simulations for short- and long-term extinction risk.
We find that reduced predictability increases extinction risk and reduces
persistence because it increases stochastic load during rescue. This
understanding of how stochastic demography, phenotypic plasticity, and
evolution interact when evolution acts on cryptic genetic variation revealed in
a novel environment can inform expectations for invasions, extinctions, or the
emergence of chemical resistance in pests.
