Effects of parental larval diet on egg size and offspring traits in Drosophila
- 29 October 2009
- journal article
- Published by The Royal Society in Biology Letters
- Vol. 6 (2), 238-241
- https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2009.0754
Abstract
If a mother's nutritional status predicts the nutritional environment of the offspring, it would be adaptive for mothers experiencing nutritional stress to prime their offspring for a better tolerance to poor nutrition. We report that in Drosophila melanogaster , parents raised on poor larval food laid 3–6% heavier eggs than parents raised on standard food, despite being 30 per cent smaller. Their offspring developed 14 h (4%) faster on the poor food than offspring of well-fed parents. However, they were slightly smaller as adults. Thus, the effects of parental diet on offspring performance under malnutrition apparently involve both adaptive plasticity and maladaptive effects of parental stress.Keywords
This publication has 20 references indexed in Scilit:
- Parental effects in ecology and evolution: mechanisms, processes and implicationsPhilosophical Transactions B, 2009
- Diet and social conditions during sexual maturation have unpredictable influences on female life history trade‐offsJournal of Evolutionary Biology, 2009
- Offspring Size Plasticity in Response to Intraspecific Competition: An Adaptive Maternal Effect across Life‐History StagesThe American Naturalist, 2008
- Maternal and paternal condition effects on offspring phenotype inTelostylinus angusticollis(Diptera: Neriidae)Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 2007
- The effect of parental rearing conditions on offspring life history in Anopheles stephensiMalaria Journal, 2007
- The thrifty phenotype hypothesisBritish Medical Bulletin, 2001
- Evolutionary Ecology of Progeny Size in ArthropodsAnnual Review of Entomology, 2000
- Life‐History Consequences of Egg Size inDrosophila MelanogasterThe American Naturalist, 1997
- Effects of maternal nutrition and egg provisioning on parameters of larval hatch, survival and dispersal in the gypsy moth, Lymantria dispar L.Oecologia, 1996
- Family planning inDaphnia: resistance to starvation in offspring born to mothers grown at different food levelsOecologia, 1992