Abstract
Despite evidence of maternal age effects in a number of teleost species, there have been challenges to the assertion that maternal age intrinsically influences offspring quality. From an evolutionary perspective, maternal age effects result in young females paradoxically investing in less fit offspring despite a greater potential fitness benefit that might be gained by allocating this energy to individual somatic growth. Although a narrow range of conditions could lead to a maternal fitness benefit via the production of lower quality offspring, evolutionary theorists suggest these conditions are seldom met and that the reported maternal age effects are more likely products of the environmental context. Our goal was to determine if maternal effects operated on offspring provisioning in a long-lived rockfish (genus Sebastes), and to evaluate any such effects as an intrinsic function of maternal age or a context-dependent effect of the offspring release environment. We found that offspring provisioning is a function of both maternal age and the timing of offspring release; older females exhibit increased provisioning over younger females throughout the spawning season despite a decrease in provisioning across all maternal ages as the season progresses. These findings suggest a role for both maternal age effects and a potential context-dependent maternal effect in population productivity, carrying important implications when modelling population persistence and resilience.
Highlights
Despite evidence of maternal age effects in a number of teleost species, there have been challenges to the assertion that maternal age intrinsically influences offspring quality
Maternal age effects result in young females paradoxically investing in less fit offspring despite a greater potential fitness benefit that might be gained by allocating this energy to individual somatic growth
Marshall et al [9] contend that maternal age effects result in young females paradoxically investing in less fit offspring, despite the greater fitness benefit that might be gained from allocating this reproductive effort to somatic growth
Summary
Despite evidence of maternal age effects in a number of teleost species, there have been challenges to the assertion that maternal age intrinsically influences offspring quality. We found that offspring provisioning is a function of both maternal age and the timing of offspring release; older females exhibit increased provisioning over younger females throughout the spawning season despite a decrease in provisioning across all maternal ages as the season progresses These findings suggest a role for both maternal age effects and a potential context-dependent maternal effect in population productivity, carrying important implications when modelling population persistence and resilience. A model developed to investigate maternal age effects in marine fishes by Marshall et al [9] showed a narrow range of conditions leading to a maternal fitness benefit via production of lower quality offspring This finding builds upon the models of Parker & Begon [13] that suggested no net fitness benefit of an increase in offspring size between small and large females due to an increasingly competitive offspring environment with increasing clutch size in terrestrial insect species. The authors hypothesized this difference could be attributed to seasonal changes in the California Current, which is typified by low productivity in the winter, favouring increased larval provisioning, and high productivity in the late spring, favouring decreased larval provisioning
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