Abstract
Developmental plasticity can match offspring phenotypes to environmental conditions experienced by parents. Such epigenetic modifications are advantageous when parental conditions anticipate offspring environments. Here we show firstly, that developmental plasticity manifests differently in males and females. Secondly, that under stable conditions, phenotypic responses (metabolism and locomotion) accumulate across several generations. Metabolic scope in males was greater at warmer test temperatures (26–36 °C) in offspring bred at warm temperatures (29–30 °C) compared to those bred at cooler temperatures (22–23 °C), lending support to the predictive adaptive hypothesis. However, this transgenerational matching was not established until the second (F2) generation. For other responses, e.g. swimming performance in females, phenotypes of offspring bred in different thermal environments were different in the first (F1) generation, but became more similar across three generations, implying canalization. Thirdly, when environments changed across generations, the grandparental environment affected offspring phenotypes. In females, the mode of the swimming thermal performance curve shifted to coincide with the grandparental rather than the parental or offspring developmental environments, and this lag in response may represent a cost of plasticity. These findings show that the effects of developmental plasticity differ between traits, and may be modulated by the different life histories of males and females.
Highlights
Environmental conditions experienced by parents and during early embryonic development can modify offspring phenotypes[1,2,3]
We tested the hypotheses that (a) thermal performance of offspring is matched to conditions experienced by parents and during early development so that offspring perform better in the matched relative to the mismatched environmental conditions. (b) that phenotypic responses accumulate across several generations to improve the match of performance optima to different but stable environmental conditions; (c) if the environment changes between grandparental and parental generations, the grandparental environment will influence phenotypes and attenuate phenotypic matching to environmental temperatures
Across all generations Ucrit was higher in fish developed at 29 °C compared to those developed at 23 °C at all test temperatures
Summary
Environmental conditions experienced by parents and during early embryonic development can modify offspring phenotypes[1,2,3]. Such developmental plasticity across generations (transgenerational effects) acts much quicker than adaptation by natural selection. It has been suggested that rather than acting as a digital (on-off) mechanism, the phenotypic effects of epigenetic modifications in response to the environment occur gradually over several generations[22]. The cost of plasticity lies principally in a mismatch between phenotype and environment, when later offspring environmental conditions are different from those experienced by parents and during the early embryonic stages[6, 17, 23]. We tested the hypotheses that (a) thermal performance of offspring is matched to conditions experienced by parents and during early development so that offspring perform better in the matched relative to the mismatched environmental conditions. (b) that phenotypic responses accumulate across several generations to improve the match of performance optima to different but stable environmental conditions; (c) if the environment changes between grandparental and parental generations, the grandparental environment will influence phenotypes and attenuate phenotypic matching to environmental temperatures
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