environmentdependent

Environment-dependent describes any situation in which the result of a process, the performance of a system, or the observed property depends on external conditions. The environment can include physical factors such as temperature, humidity, light, or chemical context; biological contexts like nutrient availability or social setting; or computing contexts such as operating system, hardware, or locale.

In biology, phenotype expression is often environment-dependent; same genotype may produce different traits depending on temperature, nutrition, or stress; this genotype-by-environment interaction influences adaptation and selection.

In ecology and evolution, species distribution and fitness depend on environmental variables; climate change alters environment-dependent dynamics, affecting community structure and population trajectories.

In materials science, material properties such as electrical conductivity or refractive index vary with temperature, pressure, or composition, leading to performance changes under different operating conditions.

In software engineering, software behavior can be environment-dependent; bugs or features rely on OS, libraries, configuration, or platform-specific quirks; this affects testing, portability, and reproducibility of results.

In research and modeling, environment-dependent models account for how predictors interact with contextual conditions, and sensitivity analysis examines dependency on environment to improve robustness and generalizability.