  The diversity and quality of natural systems have been a puzzle and
inspiration for communities studying artificial life. It is now widely admitted
that the adaptation mechanisms enabling these properties are largely influenced
by the environments they inhabit. Organisms facing environmental variability
have two alternative adaptation mechanisms operating at different timescales:
\textit{plasticity}, the ability of a phenotype to survive in diverse
environments and \textit{evolvability}, the ability to adapt through mutations.
Although vital under environmental variability, both mechanisms are associated
with fitness costs hypothesized to render them unnecessary in stable
environments. In this work, we study the interplay between environmental
dynamics and adaptation in a minimal model of the evolution of plasticity and
evolvability. We experiment with different types of environments characterized
by the presence of niches and a climate function that determines the fitness
landscape. We empirically show that environmental dynamics affect plasticity
and evolvability differently and that the presence of diverse ecological niches
favors adaptability even in stable environments. We perform ablation studies of
the selection mechanisms to separate the role of fitness-based selection and
niche-limited competition. Results obtained from our minimal model allow us to
propose promising research directions in the study of open-endedness in
biological and artificial systems.
