Parental age influences developmental stability of the progeny inDrosophila

Abstract

The stochastic nature of biochemical processes is a source of variability that influences developmental stability. Developmental instability (DI) is often estimated through fluctuating asymmetry (FA), a parameter that deals with withinindividual variation in bilateral structures. A relevant goal is to shed light on how environment, physiology and genotype relate to DI, thus providing a more comprehensive view of organismal development. Using Drosophila melanogaster isogenic lines, we investigated the effect of parental age, parental diet and offspring heterozygosity on DI. In this work, we have uncovered a clear relationship between parental age and offspring asymmetry. We show that asymmetry of the progeny increases concomitantly with parental age. Moreover, we demonstrate that enriching the diet of parents mitigates the effect of age on offspring symmetry. We show as well that increasing the heterozygosity of the progeny eliminates the effect of parental age on offspring symmetry. Taken together, our results suggest that diet, genotype and age of the parents interact to determine offspring DI in wild populations. These findings provide us with an avenue to understand the mechanisms underlying DI.

Offspring of older parents are smaller—but no less bilaterally symmetrical—than offspring of younger parents in the aquatic plant Lemna turionifera

“…Regarding offspring shape, we found scant evidence that fronds of older parents were less bilaterally symmetrical than their earlier‐detached sister fronds (Figure b,c), thus failing to support our prediction, and in contrast to the results on wing asymmetry in Drosophila by Colines et al. (). We propose that a negative relationship between offspring bilateral symmetry and parental age may be more common in species for which bilateral symmetry is closely related to fitness.…”

“…Measures of symmetry typically compare homologous anatomical landmarks on corresponding left and right structures (e.g., on flies’ wings (Colines et al., ) and zygomorphic flowers (Gómez, Perfectti, & Camacho, )) or on left and right sides of the same structure (Klingenberg et al., ). Lemna turionifera has few obvious and consistent anatomical landmarks on the edge of the fronds, other than perhaps the point farthest from the centroid of its outline.…”

“…Just as older parents, when experiencing general age‐related physiological deterioration, may produce shorter‐lived, lower‐reproducing, and smaller offspring, so too can we hypothesize that they may be less able to produce bilaterally symmetrical offspring, compared to their younger counterparts. Supporting this hypothesis, Colines, Cabrera Rodríguez, Hasson, Carreira, and Frankel () found strong evidence of progressively increasing wing asymmetry and leg asymmetry in Drosophila melanogaster of older versus younger parents (but also see more equivocal results in Parsons, ; Wakefield, Harris, & Markow, ).…”

Modeling dietary influences on offspring metabolic programming in Drosophila melanogaster

“…The benefits afforded by the fly, including ease of genetic and dietary manipulation, a rapid life-cycle, conserved metabolic tissues and signaling pathways, make it an ideal tool for elucidating molecular mechanisms of parental metabolic programming. Several Drosophila studies have focused on the contribution of parental diet on offspring health focusing on both under- and overnutrition (Vijendravarma et al , 2010; Valtonen et al , 2012a; Matzkin et al , 2013; Colines et al , 2015; Hardy et al , 2015). …”

“…When eggs of malnourished parents were laid on nutrient poor food they pupated at a faster rate than eggs from standard diet-fed parents (Vijendravarma et al , 2010). Studies in the fly have also demonstrated that a carbohydrate enriched parental diet can ameliorate the influence of mature parental age on offspring asymmetry relative to old parents reared solely on a protein-rich diet (Colines et al , 2015). …”