The Maternal Environment Affects Offspring Viability via an Indirect Effect of Yolk Investment on Offspring Size

Abstract

Environmental conditions that reproductive females experience can influence patterns of offspring provisioning and fitness. In particular, prey availability can influence maternal reproduction and, in turn, affect the viability of their offspring. Although such maternal effects are widespread, the mechanisms by which these effects operate are poorly understood. We manipulated the amount of prey available to female brown anole lizards (Anolis sagrei) to evaluate how this factor affects patterns of reproductive investment (total egg output, egg size, yolk steroids) and offspring viability (morphology, growth, survival). Experimental reduction of yolk in a subset of eggs enabled us to evaluate a potential causal mechanism (yolk investment) that mediates the effect of maternal prey availability on offspring viability. We show that limited prey availability significantly reduced egg size, which negatively influenced offspring size, growth, and survival. Experimental yolk removal from eggs directly reduced offspring size, which, in turn, negatively affected offspring growth and survival. These findings show that maternal environments (i.e., low prey) can affect offspring fitness via an indirect effect of yolk investment on offspring size and highlight the complex set of indirect effects by which maternal effects can operate.

Habitat- and season-specific temperatures affect phenotypic development of hatchling lizards

“…However, the positive effect of July nest temperatures on locomotor performance could offset any negative effects of hatching late. Negative consequences of late hatching could further be diminished via seasonal increases in maternal investment to eggs, which has been demonstrated previously in A. sagrei [17]. Notably, however, any benefit of increased locomotor speed (owing to July nest temperatures) must be realized very soon after hatching, because incubation effects disappeared by 3 weeks of age.…”

“…Eggs were collected three times weekly towards the end of the reproductive season (2 September-16 October 2013). Eggs produced late in the season were used to prevent potential confounding effects of seasonal differences in maternal allocation [17]. Importantly, preliminary results from recent work suggest that phenotypic responses to season-specific temperatures do not differ between early-versus late-produced embryos (P. R. Pearson Incubation treatments (figure 1) were determined from data collected from iButton temperature loggers deployed in potential nest sites.…”

Loggerhead turtle (Caretta caretta) offspring size does not vary with maternal alternative foraging behaviors: support for their phenotypic plasticity

“…In some cases, prey quality or quantity is positively correlated with offspring size (Kaplan 1987;Warner and Lovern 2014), whereas, in other cases, it inversely affects offspring size (Reznick and Yang 1993;Jonsson et al 1996;Warner et al 2007;Iguchi 2012). Other works have shown a lack of correlation between prey and offspring size (Morita and Takashima 1998;da Costa Araújo et al 2013).…”

食物限制对密点麻蜥繁殖投入和幼体表型的影响

“…The pre-breeding nutritional condition of females is closely related to the production of neonates in oviparous vertebrates, with reduced fecundity under conditions of food limitation (Du, 2006; Donelson et al, 2008; Johnson et al, 2014; Lehman & Smith, 1988; Warner & Lovern, 2014). In response to decreased resources, the females of multiple-clutch species can reduce their reproductive output by decreasing litter size (Sun et al, 2002), offspring size (Abell, 1999), or reproductive frequency (Du, 2006).…”

“…Despite extensive studies regarding the effect of food availability on maternal reproductive traits (e.g. Bonnet et al, 2001; Du, 2006; Hogstedt, 1981; Kitaysky et al, 1999; Warner & Lovern, 2014; Warner et al, 2015), how female reproduction responds to food availability might differ among species and deserves further investigation.…”