Lendület Evolutionary Ecology Research Group, Plant Protection Institute, Centre for Agricultural Research, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary.
J Evol Biol. 2018 May;31(5):710-721. doi: 10.1111/jeb.13258. Epub 2018 Mar 23.
Predator-induced plasticity has been in the focus of evolutionary ecological research in the last decades, but the consequences of temporal variation in the presence of cues predicting offspring environment have remained controversial. This is partly due to the fact that the role of early environmental effects has scarcely been scrutinized in this context while also controlling for potential maternal effects. In this study, we investigated how past environmental conditions, that is different combinations of risky or safe adult (prenatal) and oviposition (early post-natal) environments, affected offspring's plastic responses in hatching time and locomotor activity to predation risk during development in the smooth newt (Lissotriton vulgaris). We found that females did not adjust their reproductive investment to the perceived level of risk in the adult environment, and this prenatal environment had generally negligible effect on offspring phenotype. However, when predator cues were absent during oviposition, larvae raised in the presence of predator cues delayed their hatching and exhibited a decreased activity compared to control larvae developing without predator cues, which responses are advantageous when predators pose a threat to hatched larvae. In the presence of predator cues during oviposition, the difference in hatching time persisted, but the difference in general locomotor activity disappeared between risk-exposed and control larvae. Our findings provide clear experimental evidence that fine-scale temporal variation in a predictive cue during and after egg-laying interactively affects offspring phenotype, and highlight the importance of the early post-natal environment, which may exert a substantial influence on progeny's phenotype also under natural conditions.
在过去的几十年里，捕食者诱导的可塑性一直是进化生态学研究的焦点，但预测后代环境的线索存在时间变化的后果仍然存在争议。这在一定程度上是因为在控制潜在的母体效应的同时，在这种情况下，很少有研究关注早期环境效应的作用。在这项研究中，我们调查了过去的环境条件，即不同的风险或安全的成年（产前）和产卵（早期产后）环境组合，如何影响光滑蝾螈（Lissotriton vulgaris）发育过程中孵化时间和对捕食风险的运动活性的后代的可塑性反应。我们发现，雌性不会根据成年环境中感知到的风险水平来调整其繁殖投资，这种产前环境对后代表型通常没有影响。然而，当产卵期间不存在捕食者线索时，与在没有捕食者线索的情况下发育的对照幼虫相比，在捕食者线索存在下饲养的幼虫会延迟孵化，并表现出较低的活动水平，这些反应在捕食者对孵化幼虫构成威胁时是有利的。在产卵期间存在捕食者线索的情况下，风险暴露和对照幼虫之间的孵化时间差异仍然存在，但一般运动活性的差异消失了。我们的研究结果提供了明确的实验证据，表明在产卵期间和之后，预测线索的细微时间变化会相互作用地影响后代的表型，并强调了早期产后环境的重要性，即使在自然条件下，它也可能对后代的表型产生实质性的影响。
