High-quality developmental environments often improve individual performance into adulthood, but it is not clear what mediates these "silver spoon" effects. Furthermore, allocating toward early-life traits, such as growth, development rate, or reproduction, may lead to trade-offs with late life, so it is uncertain how a rich developmental environment will affect the ageing process (senescence). To investigate the effect of early-life environmental quality on life-history traits including senescence, and the traits mediating this, we reared larval antler flies (Protopiophila litigata) on four diets of varying nutrient concentration, then recorded survival and mating success of adult males released in the wild.Declining diet quality was associated with slower development, but had no effect on other life-history traits once development time was accounted for. Fast developing males were larger and lived longer, but experienced more rapid senescence in survival and lower mating rate than slow developers.Ultimately, larval diet, development time, and body size did not predict lifetime mating success. Thus, a rich environment led to a mixture of apparent benefits and costs, mediated by development time. Our results are largely inconsistent with the silver spoon hypothesis, and suggest that development time mediates the response of adult life-history traits to early-life environmental quality.
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