IPHC, Département d'Ecologie, Physiologie et Ethologie, CNRS, University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France.
Oecologia. 2011 Oct;167(2):315-23. doi: 10.1007/s00442-011-1986-0. Epub 2011 Apr 7.
Conditions experienced in early life have been shown to affect the development or programming of physiological processes. While animals may recover from earlier periods of adversity, this process can carry long-term costs. Such long-term effects are likely to be most evident when individuals are placed in demanding situations that require high performance. Escape flight speed in passerine birds is crucial to predator evasion and requires very rapid take-off. Here, we examine whether the ability to maintain escape flight performance during the immediate post-breeding period is influenced by conditions in early life. We manipulated the early life conditions experienced by zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) by rearing them on either low or high quality food through the growth period, or by changing conditions halfway through the nestling period, moving from high to low or vice versa. While there was no difference amongst the treatment groups in body size attained by adulthood, amongst the birds that experienced low quality food, the body size of those that were switched to a high quality diet halfway through the nestling growth period recovered faster than those that had low quality food until fledging. We found no differences amongst the dietary groups in flight performance at adulthood prior to breeding, and all groups showed a decline in average escape flight performance over the breeding period. However, the magnitude of the post-breeding decline in flight performance for a given level of reproductive output was significantly greater for those females that had experienced a switch from a low to a high quality diet during the nestling phase. These results suggest that this diet-induced rapid recovery of body size, which may have immediate competitive advantages, nonetheless carries locomotory costs in later life manifest in the capacity to sustain the high performance escape response during the post-reproductive recovery phase.
早期生活经历已被证明会影响生理过程的发育或编程。虽然动物可能会从早期逆境中恢复过来，但这个过程可能会带来长期的代价。当个体处于需要高表现的苛刻环境中时，这种长期影响可能最为明显。雀形目鸟类的逃避飞行速度对于逃避捕食者至关重要，需要非常迅速的起飞。在这里，我们研究了个体在繁殖后立即的飞行表现是否受到早期生活条件的影响。我们通过在生长期间用低质量或高质量的食物饲养斑马雀（Taeniopygia guttata），或者在育雏期中途改变条件，从高质量变为低质量或反之，来操纵早期生活经历。虽然成年时各组个体的体型大小没有差异，但在经历低质量食物的鸟类中，那些在育雏生长期间中途转换为高质量饮食的个体的体型恢复速度比那些一直食用低质量食物的个体更快。我们在繁殖前成年鸟类的飞行性能方面没有发现各组之间的差异，而且所有组在繁殖期间的平均逃避飞行性能都有所下降。然而，对于那些在育雏期经历从低质量到高质量饮食转变的个体来说，在给定繁殖输出水平下，繁殖后飞行性能下降的幅度要大得多。这些结果表明，这种饮食诱导的体型快速恢复可能具有直接的竞争优势，但在以后的生活中会带来运动成本，表现为在繁殖后恢复阶段维持高表现逃避反应的能力下降。
