Thermal exposure and transgenerational plasticity influence embryonic success in a bivoltine estuarine sea hare

Abstract

MEPS Marine Ecology Progress Series Contact the journal Facebook Twitter RSS Mailing List Subscribe to our mailing list via Mailchimp HomeLatest VolumeAbout the JournalEditorsTheme Sections MEPS 634:199-211 (2020) - DOI: https://doi.org/10.3354/meps13207 Thermal exposure and transgenerational plasticity influence embryonic success in a bivoltine estuarine sea hare Richelle L. Tanner1,2,5,*, Rauri C. K. Bowie1,3, Jonathon H. Stillman1,2,4 1Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA 2Estuary and Ocean Science Center, San Francisco State University, Tiburon, CA 94920, USA 3Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA 4Department of Biology, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA 94132, USA 5Present address: School of Biological Sciences, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99163, USA *Corresponding author: richelle.tanner@richelletanner.com ABSTRACT: Phenotypic plasticity has the potential to influence environmental adaptation on extremely short evolutionary timescales. Transgenerational plasticity (TGP) allows parents to provision their offspring for rapid environmental shifts in as little as one generation. We hypothesized that organisms that produce multiple generations of offspring each year use TGP to maximize their fitness under predictable fluctuations in seasonal environments. Using the direct-developing bivoltine eelgrass sea hare Phyllaplysia taylori as a test case, we examined the impacts of seasonal thermal variation (i.e. average temperature and acute heat stress) on physiological tolerance, maternal provisioning, and developmental plasticity across multiple generations. In the laboratory, we acclimated seasonally acclimatized adults from successive generations at 13, 17, and 21°C in order to assess plasticity of thermal tolerance limits. We also examined the effects of thermal acclimation and heat stress on reproductive output within a single generation in order to characterize TGP. Physiological plasticity, including but not limited to TGP, successfully maintained the viability of offspring under 2 seasonal conditions regularly experienced in the wild, despite differences in the density of offspring per clutch and large individual differences in offspring numbers under these conditions. These results indicate that warmer conditions (21°C) disrupt current patterns of plasticity and warrant further investigation of the long-term effects of chronic stress on TGP under climate change. KEY WORDS: Phyllaplysia taylori · Physiological plasticity · Seasonal variation · Estuarine invertebrate · Thermal tolerance Full text in pdf format Supplementary material PreviousNextCite this article as: Tanner RL, Bowie RCK, Stillman JH (2020) Thermal exposure and transgenerational plasticity influence embryonic success in a bivoltine estuarine sea hare. Mar Ecol Prog Ser 634:199-211. https://doi.org/10.3354/meps13207 Export citation RSS - Facebook - Tweet - linkedIn Cited by Published in MEPS Vol. 634. Online publication date: January 23, 2020 Print ISSN: 0171-8630; Online ISSN: 1616-1599 Copyright © 2020 Inter-Research.