Measurement of the heritability of a trait is relative in a more variable environment, the environment has a bigger influence on the total variation of the trait.
Our finding of no effect on male or female fitness does not, of course, preclude the possibility that the Wolbachia strain infecting our population has a positive effect outside the laboratory, where flies are expected to encounter a more variable environment.
In the field, plants are expected to be subjected to higher levels of stress and a more variable environment, both of which may be responsible for higher antioxidant content in the wild species in previous work.
Finally, to consider the effects of a more variable environment, we repeated initiation (prefishing) and fishing simulations under stochastic carrying capacity and recruitment, and we compared population responses to fishing under deterministic versus stochastic conditions.
Facultative bacteria that live both in hosts and in the outside world are exposed to a more variable environment than the former classes, but less variable than the multiple class that spans widely different habitats.
The roots occupy a much more variable environment (soil) than does the canopy (air); the respective fractal dimensions may indicate the optimum branching system in foraging either for solutes or for light.
