A chemical signal of offspring quality affects maternal care in a social insect

Mas, Flore; Haynes, Kenneth F.; Kölliker, Mathias

doi:10.1098/rspb.2009.0498

Cited by 66 publications

(71 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…On a proximate level, the transgenerational effects of maternal loss on nymph defence could be mediated by a parent-of-origin effect on the offspring's chemical signatures. These signatures are known to mediate behavioural interactions between earwig mothers and nymphs as well as among nymphs, to be flexible over time, and to determine the amount of food provisioned by mothers [38].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Short-term benefits, but transgenerational costs of maternal loss in an insect with facultative maternal care

et al. 2015

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A lack of parental care is generally assumed to entail substantial fitness costs for offspring that ultimately select for the maintenance of family life across generations. However, it is unknown whether these costs arise when parental care is facultative, thus questioning their fundamental importance in the early evolution of family life. Here, we investigated the short-term, long-term and transgenerational effects of maternal loss in the European earwig Forficula auricularia, an insect with facultative post-hatching maternal care. We showed that maternal loss did not influence the developmental time and survival rate of juveniles, but surprisingly yielded adults of larger body and forceps size, two traits associated with fitness benefits. In a cross-breeding/ cross-fostering experiment, we then demonstrated that maternal loss impaired the expression of maternal care in adult offspring. Interestingly, the resulting transgenerational costs were not only mediated by the early-life experience of tending mothers, but also by inherited, parent-of-origin-specific effects expressed in juveniles. Orphaned females abandoned their juveniles for longer and fed them less than maternally-tended females, while foster mothers defended juveniles of orphaned females less well than juveniles of maternally-tended females. Overall, these findings reveal the key importance of transgenerational effects in the early evolution of family life.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Short-term benefits, but transgenerational costs of maternal loss in an insect with facultative maternal care

et al. 2015

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“…The developmental time for first clutch nymphs was estimated by counting the number of days from hatching to the first observation of a second instars nymph in a clutch, a good measure of mean developmental time of the entire brood [22]. Finally, food provisioning towards first clutch nymphs was estimated using four successive steps that started at day 5 and consisted in (i) food depriving mothers and nymphs for 24 h, (ii) isolating females for 1 h while offering them green-coloured food, (iii) putting each female back in contact with 20 of its foster nymphs for 15 h, and (iv) calculating the proportion of nymphs with green gut [22,27]. The actual number of nymphs tended by foster mothers was not significantly correlated with our measure of food provisioning to the 20 nymphs (Pearson correlation test, r ¼ 20.053, p ¼ 0.51).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parental antagonism and parent–offspring co-adaptation interact to shape family life

Meunier

Kölliker

2012

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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The family is an arena for conflicts between offspring, mothers and fathers that need resolving to promote the evolution of parental care and the maintenance of family life. Co-adaptation is known to contribute to the resolution of parent–offspring conflict over parental care by selecting for combinations of offspring demand and parental supply that match to maximize the fitness of family members. However, multiple paternity and differences in the level of care provided by mothers and fathers can generate antagonistic selection on offspring demand (mediated, for example, by genomic imprinting) and possibly hamper co-adaptation. While parent–offspring co-adaptation and parental antagonism are commonly considered two major processes in the evolution of family life, their co-occurrence and the evolutionary consequences of their joint action are poorly understood. Here, we demonstrate the simultaneous and entangled effects of these two processes on outcomes of family interactions, using a series of breeding experiments in the European earwig, Forficula auricularia , an insect species with uniparental female care. As predicted from parental antagonism, we show that paternally inherited effects expressed in offspring influence both maternal care and maternal investment in future reproduction. However, and as expected from the entangled effects of parental antagonism and co-adaptation, these effects critically depended on postnatal interactions with caring females and maternally inherited effects expressed in offspring. Our results demonstrate that parent–offspring co-adaptation and parental antagonism are entangled key drivers in the evolution of family life that cannot be fully understood in isolation.

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“…Husbandry conditions and general handling up to the hatching of clutches followed the protocols described in detail by Kölliker (2007) and Mas et al (2009). For logistic reasons, that is, to spread out egg-laying and hatching, we split the lab population in two sub-populations that were set up either in July or October under a short-day photoperiod regime to trigger egg-laying (photoperiod/temperature: 8:16h / 20:15°C (day-night) and 50% relative humidity).…”

Section: Husbandrymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Most of these studies manipulated the short-term nutritional condition (hunger) of offspring and, hence, tested shortterm, potentially transient, effects of offspring signals on the amount of food provisioned by parents. Fewer studies, particularly on colouration and UV-reflectance in birds (Lyon et al 1994;Price and Ydenberg 1995;Saino et al 2000;Bize et al 2006;Tanner and Richner 2008) and recently on a chemical signal in an insect (Mas et al 2009), also showed that condition-dependent signals not always function as signals of short-term "need" but sometimes reflect a longer-term nutritional effect as an offspring signal of "quality" or reproductive value. Thus, offspring signals may contain a range of information influencing parental investment in terms of the amount and/or maintenance and duration of care.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This species displays characteristic maternal behaviours, such as brood defence, grooming (see Fulton 1924;Lamb 1976b) and food provisioning by trophallaxis (Staerkle and Kölliker 2008) until nymphs disperse. Recently, Mas et al (2009) demonstrated an offspring chemical signal of quality based on cuticular hydrocarbons. Exposure of mothers to chemical cues extracted from well-fed nymphs lead to higher food provisioning to the brood than exposure to extracts from poorly fed nymphs or just solvent.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Differential effects of offspring condition-dependent signals on maternal care regulation in the European earwig

Mas

2010

Behav Ecol Sociobiol

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Parent-offspring conflict theory predicts the evolution of offspring solicitation signals that can influence the amount and/or the duration of parental investment. Short-term effects of offspring solicitation signals on parental food provisioning have been widely demonstrated, but persistent effects of offspring signals on the maintenance of parental care have been rarely studied. Also, the relation between the amount of care provided to the brood and how it is distributed among individual offspring within a brood is not well enough understood. Here, we investigated in the European earwig (Forficula auricularia) the effects of offspring condition-dependent chemical signals on the maintenance of maternal care among broods and the distribution of maternal food within broods. Mothers were isolated from their brood for 3 days and continuously exposed to chemical signals extracted from broods of experimentally manipulated nutritional state. After re-introducing mothers to their brood, a range of maternal behaviours were quantified. We found that earwig mothers groomed their offspring significantly more after exposure to chemical extract from high-food brood in comparison with mothers exposed to extract from low-food brood, which in turn displayed significantly more aggressive behaviour. Furthermore, we manipulated offspring individual nutritional condition within the brood to evaluate the effect of offspring state on the within-brood food distribution. Within broods, poorly fed individuals received significantly more food than well-fed individuals, probably due to scramble competition. These results show that earwig nymphs express multi-component conditiondependent signals and behaviours differentially affecting maternal care provisioned to the brood and the distribution of care within broods.

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A chemical signal of offspring quality affects maternal care in a social insect

Cited by 66 publications

References 42 publications

Short-term benefits, but transgenerational costs of maternal loss in an insect with facultative maternal care

Short-term benefits, but transgenerational costs of maternal loss in an insect with facultative maternal care

Parental antagonism and parent–offspring co-adaptation interact to shape family life

Differential effects of offspring condition-dependent signals on maternal care regulation in the European earwig

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