BioConcepts

adaptive landscapeadaptive Landschaft (ger.)

• A graphic mode of representing the fitness distribution among a population's types of organisms or genes (or gene frequencies). (HWB)
  category evolution

  1944

  Some of the more hypsodont variants [of the early horses] reached a point on the adaptive landscape at the base, or on the lowest slopes, of the grazing peak. It became possible for them to supplement their food supply by eating some grass

  Simpson, G.G. (1944). Tempo and Mode in Evolution: 209; cf. 124.

  1956

  [adaptation landscape

  Gerard, R.W., Kluckhohn, C. & Rapoport, A. (1956). Biological and cultural evolution. Behavioral Science 1, 6-34: 14.]

  1956

  The genetic pattern and the more abstract adaptive landscape of a complex species, or of a genus or comparium, may be visualized as a complex topography of hills, speaks and ridges of different heights and extents

  Whittaker, R.H. (1956). Vegetation of the Great Smoky Mountains. Ecol. Monogr. 26, 1-80: 28.

  1960

  adaptive landscape [...] Using the distribution of genotypes […] it is then possible to calculate W [the mean adaptive value, i.e. mean fitness] for any combination of gene frequencies q1 and q2 and this may be put in the form of a surface or topography

  Lewontin, R.C. & White, M.J.D. (1960). Interaction between inversion polymorphisms of two chromosome pairs in the grasshopper, Moraba scurra. Evolution 14, 116-29: 120.

  1982

  adaptive landscape The figurative representation of the fitness of organisms in the form of a topographical map, on which those fit genotypes (species) able to occupy particular ecological niches are depicted as adaptive peaks separated by adaptive valleys representing unfit gene combinations; adaptive surface, adaptive topography.   

  Lincoln, R.J., Boxshall, G.A. & Clark, P.F. (1982). A Dictionary of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics: 4.