Fig. 3. The hierarchical/conceptual relationships among phenotypic plasticity, natural selection, and genetic assimilation or phenotypic accommodation. Plasticity is a developmental process on which the evolutionary mechanism of selection may operate, yielding the evolutionary outcome (under certain conditions) of assimilation/accommodation. Seen this way, there is no possibility of confusing plasticity as ontologically equivalent to natural selection, and therefore somehow a threat to the Modern Synthesis.