The environmental factors work as signals to influence the development, thus lead to the polymorphism occurrence. The problem above has always been a hot issue in the field of genetics, developmental biology, evolutionary biology and ecology, and it becomes an interdisciplinary field - “Ecological developmental biology”, based on the long-term accumulation and expansion of research result. The subject area, based on the theory of developmental plasticity, explores the mechanism of environmental factors which induce the variety phenotypes during development process, including polymorphism and reaction norms. It has been highly valued the relationships among the environment, development and evolution. This paper is a review about the historic development background. Moreover, we have analyzed the research topics, and focused on the mechanism of the polymorphism produced through different environmental factors, including polymorphism induced by season and predators, the caste differentiation induced by various nutritional and hormonal in social insects, the relationship among temperature, enzymes and hormones in the environmental sex determination, the adaption and evolution, the immune response, the neuronal plasticity, the environmental pollutants and the malformation, etc. Furthermore, the research prospects of ecological developmental biology have been discussed in this paper.