Life-stage specific environments in a cichlid fish: implications for inducible maternal effects |
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Authors: | Alexander Kotrschal Gerald Heckel Danielle Bonfils Barbara Taborsky |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Animal Ecology, Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Evolutionary Biology Centre (EBC), Uppsala University, Norbyv?gen 18D, 75236 Uppsala, Sweden;(2) Behavioural Ecology, Institute of Ecology and Evolution, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland;(3) Computational and Molecular Population Genetics (CMPG), Institute of Ecology and Evolution, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland;(4) Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB), Genopode, Lausanne, Switzerland;(5) Evolution and Ecology Program, International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria |
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Abstract: | Through environmentally induced maternal effects females may fine-tune their offspring’s phenotype to the conditions offspring
will encounter after birth. If juvenile and adult ecologies differ, the conditions mothers experienced as juveniles may better
predict their offspring’s environment than the adult females’ conditions. Maternal effects induced by the environment experienced
by females during their early ontogeny should evolve when three ecological conditions are met: (1) Adult ecology does not
predict the postnatal environmental conditions of offspring; (2) Environmental conditions for juveniles are correlated across
successive generations; and (3) Juveniles occasionally settle in conditions that differ from the juvenile habitat of their
mothers. By combining size-structured population counts, ecological surveys and a genetic analysis of population structure
we provide evidence that all three conditions hold for Simochromis pleurospilus, a cichlid fish in which mothers adjust offspring quality to their own juvenile ecology. In particular we show (1) that the
spatial niches and the habitat quality differ between juveniles and adults, and we provide genetic evidence (2) that usually
fish of successive generations grow up in similar habitats, and (3) that occasional dispersal in populations with a different
habitat quality is likely to occur. As adults of many species cannot predict their offspring’s environment from ambient cues,
life-stage specific maternal effects are likely to be common in animals. It will therefore be necessary to incorporate parental
ontogeny in the study of parental effects when juveniles and adults inhabit different environments. |
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