Age and size at maturity: sex, environmental variability and developmental thresholds

Plaistow, Stewart J.; Lapsley, Craig; Beckerman, Andrew P.; Benton, Tim G.

doi:10.1098/rspb.2004.2682

Cited by 83 publications

(103 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Juvenile growth rate influences the size and age at which individuals mature. The relationship between size and age at maturity is 'L' shaped (Beckerman et al 2003;Plaistow et al 2004), with fast growing individuals maturing at the same age (and varying in size) and slowgrowing individuals maturing at the minimum size (and varying in age; Plaistow et al 2004). In the low-density cohorts, individuals receive more food, grow faster and mature simultaneously and at a large size.…”

Section: Results (A) Reproductive Allocationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, juveniles experiencing a low-food environment mature after 14.3G0.3 days if their mothers also came from lowfood environments, but after 23.0G0.7 days if their mothers came from high-food environments (Plaistow et al 2004). To test whether these maternal effects were caused by changes in females' egg provisioning strategies, we reared groups of mites on different per capita food supplies.…”

Section: Results (A) Reproductive Allocationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Changes in maternal investment in eggs can affect population dynamics

et al. 2005

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The way that mothers provision their offspring can have important consequences for their offspring's performance throughout life. Models suggest that maternally induced variation in life histories may have large population dynamical effects, even perhaps driving cycles such as those seen in forest Lepidoptera. The evidence for large maternal influences on population dynamics is unconvincing, principally because of the difficulty of conducting experiments at both the individual and population level. In the soil mite, Sancassania berlesei, we show that there is a trade-off between a female's fecundity and the per-egg provisioning of protein. The mother's position on this trade-off depends on her current food availability and her age. Populations initiated with 250 eggs of different mean sizes showed significant differences in the population dynamics, converging only after three generations. Differences in the growth, maturation and fecundity of the initial cohort caused differences in the competitive environment for the next generation, which, in turn, created differences in their growth and reproduction. Maternal effects in one generation can therefore lead to population dynamical consequences over many generations. Where animals live in environments that are temporally variable, we conjecture that maternal effects could result in long-term dynamical effects.

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Section: Results (A) Reproductive Allocationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Results (A) Reproductive Allocationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Changes in maternal investment in eggs can affect population dynamics

et al. 2005

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“…the developmental threshold (Day & Rowe 2002;Plaistow et al 2004). By plotting the size at metamorphosis as a function of the development time under different food conditions, an L-shaped reaction norm (following the terminology of Day & Rowe 2002) is predicted and also found in many systems (Morey & Reznick 2004;Plaistow et al 2004, but see Rudolf & Rö del 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pool desiccation and developmental thresholds in the common frog, Rana temporaria

2008

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The developmental threshold is the minimum size or condition that a developing organism must have reached in order for a life-history transition to occur. Although developmental thresholds have been observed for many organisms, inter-population variation among natural populations has not been examined. Since isolated populations can be subjected to strong divergent selection, population divergence in developmental thresholds can be predicted if environmental conditions favour fast or slow developmental time in different populations. Amphibian metamorphosis is a well-studied life-history transition, and using a common garden approach we compared the development time and the developmental threshold of metamorphosis in four island populations of the common frog Rana temporaria: two populations originating from islands with only temporary breeding pools and two from islands with permanent pools. As predicted, tadpoles from time-constrained temporary pools had a genetically shorter development time than those from permanent pools. Furthermore, the variation in development time among females from temporary pools was low, consistent with the action of selection on rapid development in this environment. However, there were no clear differences in the developmental thresholds between the populations, indicating that the main response to life in a temporary pool is to shorten the development time.

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“…For example, changes in photoperiod alter growth trajectories and can decouple life history and physiological traits (Rolff et al, 2004). Physiological parameters can be independent of size and age at maturity and thus may serve as independent targets of selection (Plaistow et al, 2004;Rolff et al, 2004). For example, damselflies developing under time constraints show reduced activity of phenoloxidase (PO), an important component of the insect immune system, but not changes in mass at emergence (Rolff et al, 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantitative genetics of immunity and life history under different photoperiods

et al. 2011

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Insects with complex life-cycles should optimize age and size at maturity during larval development. When inhabiting seasonal environments, organisms have limited reproductive periods and face fundamental decisions: individuals that reach maturity late in season have to either reproduce at a small size or increase their growth rates. Increasing growth rates is costly in insects because of higher juvenile mortality, decreased adult survival or increased susceptibility to parasitism by bacteria and viruses via compromised immune function. Environmental changes such as seasonality can also alter the quantitative genetic architecture. Here, we explore the quantitative genetics of life history and immunity traits under two experimentally induced seasonal environments in the cricket Gryllus bimaculatus. Seasonality affected the life history but not the immune phenotypes. Individuals under decreasing day length developed slower and grew to a bigger size. We found ample additive genetic variance and heritability for components of immunity (haemocyte densities, proPhenoloxidase activity, resistance against Serratia marcescens), and for the life history traits, age and size at maturity. Despite genetic covariance among traits, the structure of G was inconsistent with genetically based trade-off between life history and immune traits (for example, a strong positive genetic correlation between growth rate and haemocyte density was estimated). However, conditional evolvabilities support the idea that genetic covariance structure limits the capacity of individual traits to evolve independently. We found no evidence for GÂE interactions arising from the experimentally induced seasonality.

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Age and size at maturity: sex, environmental variability and developmental thresholds

Cited by 83 publications

References 31 publications

Changes in maternal investment in eggs can affect population dynamics

Changes in maternal investment in eggs can affect population dynamics

Pool desiccation and developmental thresholds in the common frog, Rana temporaria

Quantitative genetics of immunity and life history under different photoperiods

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