Ecology Research Group, Department of Geographical and Life Sciences, Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2011;6(10):e25840. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0025840. Epub 2011 Oct 4.
Maternal effects on progeny traits are common and these can profoundly alter progeny life history. Maternal effects can be adaptive, representing attempts to appropriately match offspring phenotype to the expected environment and are often mediated via trade-offs between progeny number and quality. Here we have investigated the effect of maternal food availability on progeny life history in the free-living nematode Caenorhabditis elegans.
METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The maternal environment affects both reproductive traits and progeny development. Comparisons of the progeny of worms from high and low maternal food environments indicates that low maternal food availability reduces progeny reproduction in good environments, increases progeny reproduction in poor environments and decreases the likelihood that progeny will develop as dauer larvae. These analyses also indicate that the effects on progeny are not a simple consequence of changes in maternal body size, but are associated with an increase in the size of eggs produced by worms at low maternal food availabilities.
CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: These results indicate that the maternal environment affects both progeny reproduction and development in C. elegans and therefore that all progeny are not equal. The observed effects are consistent with changes to egg provisioning, which are beneficial in harsh environments, and of changes to progeny development, which are beneficial in harsh environments and detrimental in benign environments. These changes in progeny life history suggest that mothers in poor quality environments may be producing larger eggs that are better suited to poor conditions.
母体效应对后代特征很常见，这些特征可以深刻改变后代的生活史。母体效应可以是适应性的，代表着试图使后代的表型与预期环境相匹配，并且通常通过后代数量和质量之间的权衡来介导。在这里，我们研究了母体食物供应对自由生活的线虫秀丽隐杆线虫后代生活史的影响。
方法/主要发现：母体环境会影响生殖特征和后代发育。比较来自高和低母体食物环境的蠕虫的后代表明，低母体食物供应会减少良好环境中后代的繁殖，增加不良环境中后代的繁殖，并降低后代发育为 dauer 幼虫的可能性。这些分析还表明，对后代的影响不是母体体型变化的简单结果，而是与低母体食物供应下蠕虫产生的卵的大小增加有关。
结论/意义：这些结果表明，母体环境会影响秀丽隐杆线虫后代的繁殖和发育，因此并非所有后代都是平等的。观察到的效应与卵供应的变化一致，在恶劣环境中是有益的，与后代发育的变化一致，在恶劣环境中是有益的，在良性环境中是有害的。这些对后代生活史的改变表明，在低质量环境中的母亲可能会产生更适合恶劣条件的大卵。
