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536 results for “maternal effects”
Born with an advantage: Early life and maternal effects on fitness in Columbian ground squirrels
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Effects of the maternal social environment on the mating signals and mate preferences of adult offspring in Enchenopa treehoppers
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Hidden causes of variation in offspring reproductive value: negative effects of maternal breeding age on offspring telomere length persist undiminished across multiple generations
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Incorporating effects of age on energy dynamics predicts non-linear maternal allocation patterns in iteroparous animals
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Data and code for: Transgenerational pathogen effects: Maternal pathogen exposure reduces offspring fitness
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Grow fast but don’t die young: maternal effects mediate life-history tradeoffs of lizards under climate warming
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Maternal and cohort effects modulate offspring responses to multiple stressors
Current concerns about climate change has led to intensive research attempting to understand how climate driven stressors affect the performance of organisms, in particular on offspring of many invertebrate and fish. Although stressors are likely to act on several stages of the life cycle, little is known about their action across life phases, for instance how multiple stressors experienced simultaneously in the maternal environment can modulate the responses to the same stressors operating in the offspring environment. Here, we study how performance of offspring of a marine invertebrate (shore crab Carcinus maenas) in response to two stressors (temperature and salinity) changes if the same stressors are experienced at the time of embryogenesis in cohorts of mothers breeding eggs at different seasons. On average, offspring responses were antagonistic: high temperature mitigated the negative effects of low salinity on survival. However, the magnitude of the response was modulated by the temperature and salinity conditions experienced by egg-carrying mothers. Performance also varied among cohorts, suggesting a role for genetic variation, and/or maternal conditions prior to fertilisation. We speculate that similar maternal effects may occur in other brooding organisms, as a consequence of anthropogenic modification of the environment.
Maternal and paternal age effects on male antler flies: a field experiment
<p><span>In many species, parental age at reproduction can influence offspring performance and lifespan, but the direction of these effects and the traits affected vary among studies. Data on parental age effects are still scarce in non-captive populations, especially insects, despite species such as fruit flies being models in laboratory-based aging research. We performed a biologically relevant experimental manipulation of maternal and paternal age at reproduction of antler flies (<i>Protopiophila litigata</i>) in the laboratory and tracked the adult lifespan and reproductive success of their male offspring released in the wild. Increased paternal, but not maternal, age somewhat increased sons' adult lifespan, while parental ages did not influence sons' mating rate or reproductive senescence. Our results indicate that while parental age effects do exist in an insect in the field, they may be beneficial in such a short-lived animal, in contrast to results from most wild vertebrates and laboratory invertebrates.</span></p>
Sex-specific intergenerational plasticity I: maternal and paternal effects on sons and daughters
<p>1. Intergenerational plasticity or parental effects – when parental environments alter the phenotype of future generations – can influence how organisms cope with environmental change. An intriguing, underexplored possibility is that sex –of both the parent and the offspring – plays an important role in driving the evolution of intergenerational plasticity in both adaptive and nonadaptive ways.</p> <p>2. Here, we evaluate the potential for sex-specific parental effects in a freshwater population of threespined sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus) by independently and jointly manipulating maternal and paternal experiences and separately evaluating their phenotypic effects in sons versus daughters. We tested the adaptive hypothesis that daughters are more responsive to cues from their mother, while sons are more responsive to cues from their father.</p> <p>3. We exposed mothers, fathers, or both parents to visual cues of predation risk and measured offspring antipredator traits and brain gene expression.</p> <p>4. Predator-exposed fathers produced sons that were more risk-prone, while predator-exposed mothers produced more anxious sons and daughters. Further, maternal and paternal effects on offspring survival were nonadditive: offspring with a predator-exposed father, but not two predator-exposed parents, had lower survival against live predators. There were also strong sex-specific effects on brain gene expression: exposing mothers versus fathers to predation risk activated different transcriptional profiles in their offspring, and sons and daughters strongly differed in the ways in which their brain gene expression profiles were influenced by parental experience.</p> <p>5. We found little evidence to support the hypothesis that offspring prioritize their same-sex parent's experience. Parental effects varied with both the sex of the parent and the offspring in complicated and nonadditive ways. Failing to account for these sex-specific patterns (e.g., by pooling sons and daughters) would have underestimated the magnitude of parental effects. Altogether, these results draw attention to the potential for sex to influence patterns of intergenerational plasticity and raise new questions about the interface between intergenerational plasticity and sex-specific selective pressures, sexual conflict, and sexual selection. </p>
Data from: Transgenerational effects in an ecological context: conditioning of adult sea urchins to upwelling conditions alters maternal provisioning and progeny phenotype
Transgenerational plasticity occurs when the conditions experienced by the parental generation influences the phenotype of their progeny. This may in turn affect progeny performance and physiological tolerance, providing a means by which organisms cope with rapid environmental change. We conditioned adult purple sea urchins, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus, to combined pCO2 and temperature conditions reflective of in situ conditions of their natural habitat, the benthos in kelp forests of nearshore California, and then assessed the performance of their progeny raised under different pCO2 levels. Adults were conditioned during gametogenesis to treatments that reflected static non-upwelling (~650 μatm pCO2, ~17°C) and upwelling (~1300 μatm pCO2, ~13°C) conditions. Following approximately 4 months of conditioning, the adults were spawned and embryos were raised under low pCO2 (~450 μatm pCO2) or high pCO2 (~1050 μatm pCO2) treatments to determine if differential maternal conditioning impacted the progeny response to a single abiotic stressor: pCO2. We examined the size, protein content, and lipid content of eggs from both sets of conditioned female urchins. Offspring were sampled at four stages of early development: hatched blastula, gastrula, prism, and echinopluteus. This resulted in four sets of offspring: (1) progeny from non-upwelling-conditioned mothers raised under low pCO2, (2) progeny from non-upwelling-conditioned mothers raised under high pCO2, (3) progeny from upwelling-conditioned mothers raised under low pCO2, and (4) progeny from upwelling-conditioned mothers raised under high pCO2. We then assessed the effects of maternal conditioning along with the effects of developmental pCO2 levels on body size of the progeny. Our results showed that differential maternal conditioning had no impact on average egg size, although non-upwelling females produced eggs that were more variable in size. Maternal conditioning did not affect protein content but did have a modest impact on egg lipid content. Developing embryos whose mothers were conditioned to simulated upwelling conditions (~1300 μatm pCO2, ~13°C) were greater in body size, although this effect was no longer evident at the echinopluteus larval stage. Although maternal conditioning affected offspring body size, the pCO2 levels under which the embryos were raised did not. Overall, this laboratory study provides insight into how transgenerational effects may function in nature. The impacts of parental environmental history on progeny phenotype during early development have important implications regarding recruitment success and population-level effects.
Data from: incubation as a driver of maternal effects: temperature influences levels of yolk maternally derived 5α-dihydrotestosterone
<p>In birds, maternal hormones deposited into eggs in response to environmental stimuli can impact offspring phenotype. Although less studied, environmental conditions can also influence females' incubation behavior, which might play a role in regulating embryo exposure to maternal hormones through changes in incubation temperature that affect the activity of the enzymes responsible for converting testosterone (T) to 5α-dihydrotestosterone (DHT) or estradiol. Here, we tested the hypothesis that the initial T content of the yolk and incubation temperature determine exposure to T metabolites during early embryo development. In the Japanese quail (<em>Coturnix japonica</em>), we experimentally manipulated yolk T and incubation temperature (38° C versus 36° C) and analyzed DHT and estradiol titers on day four of incubation. We found that eggs with experimentally increased T and those incubated at 36° C showed higher DHT concentration in egg yolk (with no synergistic effect of the two treatments). Estradiol titers were not affected by T manipulation or incubation temperature. Our study suggests that incubation temperature influences DHT titers and may act as an understudied source of maternal influence on offspring phenotype.</p>
Do maternal allocations towards offspring quality and quantity ameliorate the effects of predators on offspring survival?
<p>Reproductive allocation is often balanced between the quantity and quality of offspring. Ecological stresses, like exposure to predators, can cause organisms to shift their allocations along this continuum. While the consequences of such plastic shifts for offspring performance are often untested, they are critical to understanding the potential long-term benefits of manipulating predation risk as an agricultural pest management technique. Predation risk induces reductions in egg production and increases in nutritional condition due to maternal provisioning in Colorado potato beetles (<em>Leptinotarsa decemlineata, </em>CPB). Here we tested whether reductions in density or increases in offspring condition, which may increase per-capita larval survival, can compensate for the reduction in total egg production, especially when offspring are exposed to predators. In two field trials, we manipulated the density and condition of larval CPB and measured survival through development to adulthood in field cages with and without predaceous stink bugs (<em>Podisus maculiventris</em>). As expected, cages with the higher initial larval densities had more larvae and adults surviving in the treatments without predators –about 30-50% survival across densities. When predators were present this relationship did not hold because of density-dependent predation. Larval condition interacted with density and impacted larval survival in both trials albeit in different ways. In Trial 1, unprovisioned beetles had higher survival at the higher densities, in Trial 2 provisioned beetles had higher survival across densities.</p> <p><em>Synthesis and Applications:</em> Overall, our test of the effects of predation risk via manipulations of larval density and condition revealed few net compensatory benefits to the prey of reduced density and higher condition. Benefits to the prey of shifts in allocation from the quantity to quality of offspring may depend on factors that influence the strength of density dependence, including predation intensity. Our results suggest a new strategy of taking advantage of the reductions in prey density due to the non-consumptive effects of predators as a pest management approach to protect plants.</p>
Data from: Maternal age effects on offspring lifespan and reproduction vary within a species
<p>Across diverse taxa, offspring from older mothers have decreased lifespan and fitness. Little is known about the extent to which maternal age effects vary among genotypes for a given species, however, except for studies of a few arthropod species. To investigate the presence and degree of intraspecific variability in maternal age effects, we compared lifespan, reproductive schedule, and lifetime reproductive output of offspring produced by young, middle-aged, and old mothers in four strains of rotifers in the <em>Brachionus plicatilis </em>species complex. We found significant variability among strains in the magnitude and direction of maternal age effects on offspring life history traits. In one strain, offspring of young mothers lived 20% longer than offspring of old mothers, whereas there were no significant effects of maternal age on lifespan for other strains. Depending on strain, advanced maternal age had positive effects, negative effects, or no effect on lifetime reproductive output. Across strains, older mothers produced offspring that had higher maximum daily reproduction early in life. Effects of maternal age on offspring vital rates could not be explained by changes in trade-offs between lifespan and reproduction. This study documents intraspecific variability in maternal age effects in an additional clade. Investigating intraspecific variability is critical for understanding the ubiquity of maternal age effects and their role in the evolution of life history and aging.</p>
Maternal effects of climate warming and nitrogen deposition vary with home and introduced ranges
<p>Maternal effects allow offspring to cope with changing environments. While the immediate effects of climate warming and nitrogen (N) deposition are well documented, their maternal effects have been little studied. We conducted a 6-year maternal experiment with <i>Solidago canadensis</i>, native to North America and invasive in China, and two offspring experiments to address how maternal warming, maternal N-addition and population source interacted to influence offspring performance. Maternal effects of warming and N-addition on seed traits, leaf dry matter content, and whole-plant biomass were stronger in <i>S. canadensis</i> offspring from China than in offspring from North America. Matched maternal-offspring environments allowed offspring to perform better compared to mismatched environments; offspring grown under warming flowered and produced seeds within a growing season only when their maternal plants were previously exposed to warming. Offspring environments influenced its performance and also modulated maternal effects. We suggest that the maternal effects of simulated climate warming and N deposition could vary ranges, and our findings imply that maternal warming could advance the reproductive phenology of offspring.</p>
Inverse Lansing effect: Maternal age and provisioning affecting daughters' longevity and male offspring production
<p>Maternal age effects on offspring life history are known in a variety of organisms, with offspring of older mothers typically having lower life expectancy (Lansing Effect). However there is no consensus on generality and mechanisms of this pattern. We tested predictions of Lansing Effect in several <em>Daphnia magna</em> clones and observed clone-specific magnitude and even direction of the maternal age effect on offspring longevity. We also report ambidirectional, genotype-specific effects of maternal age on daughters' propensity to produce male offspring. Focusing on two clones with contrasting life-histories, we demonstrate that maternal age effects can be explained by lipid provisioning of embryos by mothers of different ages. Individuals from a single-generation maternal age reversal treatment showed intermediate lifespan and intermediate lipid content at birth. In the clone characterized by the "inverse Lansing Effect" neonates produced by older mothers showed higher mitochondrial membrane potential in neural tissues than their counterparts born to younger mothers. We conclude that an "inverse Lansing Effect" is possible, and hypothesize that it may be caused by age-specific maternal lipid provisioning creating a calorically restricted environment during embryonic development, which, in turn reduces fecundity and increases lifespan.</p>
Macroclimatic and maternal effects on the evolution of reproductive traits in lizards
<p>Much of life-history theory rests on fundamental assumptions about constraints on the acquisition and allocation of energy to growth and reproduction. In general, the allocation of energy to reproduction depends on maternal size, which in turn depends on environmental factors experienced throughout the life of the mother. Here, we used phylogenetic path analyses to evaluate competing hypotheses about the environmental and maternal drivers of reproductive traits in lizards. In doing so, we discovered that precipitation, rather than temperature, has shaped the evolution of the life history. Specifically, environments with greater rainfall have enabled the evolution of larger maternal size. In turn, these larger mothers produce larger clutches of larger offspring. However, annual precipitation has a negative direct effect on offspring size, despite the positive indirect effect mediated by maternal size. Possibly, the evolution of offspring size was driven by the need to conserve water in dry environments, because small organisms are particularly sensitive to water loss. Since we found that body size variation among lizards is related to a combination of climatic factors, mainly precipitation and perhaps primary production, our study challenges previous generalizations (e.g., temperature-size rule and Bergmann's rule) and suggests alternative mechanisms underlying the evolution of body size.</p>
Supplemental code and data for Hernandez et al. "Maternal effect senescence and caloric restriction interact to affect fitness through changes in life history timing"
<p>This dataset enables the user to repeat the analyses presented in the manuscript "Maternal effect senescence and caloric restriction interact to affect fitness through changes in life history timing." It is comprised of two compressed archives: one which contains code, and one which contains data.</p>
Effect of Informative Cesarean Delivery Operative Steps Video to Maternal Anxiety Level: a Randomized Controlled Trial
<p>This is a SPSS data for analysis in "Effect of Informative Cesarean Delivery Operative Steps Video to Maternal Anxiety Level: a Randomized Controlled Trial" research, and video is used for intervention group.</p>
Data from: Effects of maternal age and environmental enrichment on learning ability and brain size
<p>It is well known that maternal age at reproduction affects offspring lifespan and some other fitness-related traits, but it remains understudied whether maternal senescence affects how offspring respond to their environments. Early environment often plays a significant role in the development of an animal's behavioral phenotype. For example, complex environments can promote changes in cognitive ability and brain morphology in young animals. Here, we study whether and how maternal effect senescence influences offspring plasticity in cognition, group behavior, and brain morphology in response to environmental complexity. For this, juvenile three-spined sticklebacks from young and old mothers (i.e. 1-year and 2-years-old) were exposed to different levels of environmental enrichment and complexity (i.e. none, simple and complex), and their behavior, cognitive ability, and brain size were measured. Exposing fish to enriched conditions improved individual learning ability assessed by a repeated detour-reaching task, increased the size of the whole brain, and decreased aggressive interactions in the shoal. Maternal age did not influence the inhibitory control, learning ability, and group behavioral responses of offspring to the experimental environmental change. However, maternal age affected how some brain regions of offspring changed in response to environmental complexity. In offspring from old mothers, those exposed to the complex environment had larger telencephalons and cerebellums than those who experienced simpler environments. Our results suggest that maternal effect senescence may influence how offspring invest in brain functions related to cognition in response to environmental complexity.</p>
The maternal effects of dietary restriction on Dnmt expression and reproduction in two clones of Daphnia pulex
<p>The inheritance of epigenetic marks induced by environmental variation in a previous generation is broadly accepted as a mediator of phenotypic plasticity. Transgenerational effects linking maternal experiences to changes in morphology, gene expression, and life history of successive generations are known across many taxa. While the number of studies linking epigenetic variation to ecological maternal effects is increasing rapidly, few if any attempts have been made to investigate molecular mechanisms governing epigenetic functions in the context of ecologically relevant maternal effects. <em>Daphnia</em> make an ideal model for investigating molecular epigenetic mechanisms and ecological maternal effects because they will reproduce asexually in the lab. <em>Daphnia</em> are also known to have strong maternal effects, involving a variety of traits and environmental variables. Using two clones of <em>Daphnia</em> <em>pulex</em>, we investigated the plasticity of life history and DNA methyltransferase (Dnmt) gene expression with respect to food limitation within- and across-generations. We found strong evidence of genotypic variation of responses of life history and Dnmt expression to low food diets, both within- and across-generations. In general, effects of offspring diet were larger than either the direct maternal effect or offspring-maternal environment interactions, but the direction of the maternal effect was usually in the opposite direction of the within-generation effect. For both life history and Dnmt expression, we also found that when offspring had low food, effects of the maternal environment were stronger than when offspring had high food.</p>
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