Abstract
The world is increasingly impacted by a variety of stressors that have the potential to differentially influence life history stages of organisms. Organisms have evolved to cope with some stressors, while with others they have little capacity. It is thus important to understand the effects of both developmental and evolutionary history on survival in stressful environments. We present evidence of the effects of both developmental and evolutionary history on survival of a freshwater vertebrate, the rough-skinned newt (Taricha granulosa) in an osmotically stressful environment. We compared the survival of larvae in either NaCl or MgCl2 that were exposed to salinity either as larvae only or as embryos as well. Embryonic exposure to salinity led to greater mortality of newt larvae than larval exposure alone, and this reduced survival probability was strongly linked to the carry-over effect of stunted embryonic growth in salts. Larval survival was also dependent on the type of salt (NaCl or MgCl2) the larvae were exposed to, and was lowest in MgCl2, a widely-used chemical deicer that, unlike NaCl, amphibian larvae do not have an evolutionary history of regulating at high levels. Both developmental and evolutionary history are critical factors in determining survival in this stressful environment, a pattern that may have widespread implications for the survival of animals increasingly impacted by substances with which they have little evolutionary history.
Highlights
Natural and anthropogenic stressors are commonplace throughout the environment
Organisms may or may not have an evolutionary history of regulating the stressor in question, and this may affect their ability to effectively respond [2,3]. We propose that both an organism’s developmental history of exposure to a stressor and its evolutionary history of regulating that stressor play critical roles in the survival of organisms in stressful environments
There is the potential that organisms will encounter MgCl2 in substantial quantities in their environment. We found that both salts caused significant developmental carry-over effects from the embryonic environment on larval survival, but that the salts differed in their effects on larval survival, according to the differential evolutionary history that amphibians have with regulating the two stressors
Summary
Natural and anthropogenic stressors are commonplace throughout the environment. The ways in which stressors impact organisms, and their ability to successfully respond to these stressors is of paramount importance to our understanding of biological systems. It has been suggested that the earlier in an organism’s life history environmental stressors are experienced, the more severe the lasting consequences will be [4,5,6], and there is strong empirical evidence across animal taxa for this assertion (Table S1). This forms the basis of our developmental history hypothesis. Embryonic exposure to stressors can be critical to an animal’s future fitness (Table S1)
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