Biologische Anstalt Helgoland, Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Helgoland, Germany.
School of Ocean Sciences, College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Bangor University, Menai Bridge, UK.
Proc Biol Sci. 2020 Jun 24;287(1929):20200492. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2020.0492. Epub 2020 Jun 17.
Current concerns about climate change have led to intensive research attempting to understand how climate-driven stressors affect the performance of organisms, in particular the offspring of many invertebrates and fishes. 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 ) changes in response to two stressors (temperature and salinity) experienced during embryogenesis in brooding mothers from 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, perhaps reflecting genetic variation, and/or maternal conditions prior to embryogenesis. This study contributes towards the understanding of how anthropogenic modification of the maternal environment drives offspring performance in brooders.
目前，人们对气候变化的担忧促使人们进行深入研究，试图了解气候驱动的压力源如何影响生物的表现，特别是许多无脊椎动物和鱼类的后代。尽管压力源可能会影响生命周期的多个阶段，但人们对它们在生命阶段中的作用知之甚少，例如，在母体环境中同时经历的多种压力源如何调节对在后代环境中起作用的相同压力源的反应。在这里，我们研究了在不同季节的育母体内胚胎发生期间经历的两种压力源（温度和盐度）如何影响海洋无脊椎动物（岸蟹）后代的表现。平均而言，后代的反应是拮抗的：高温减轻了低盐度对生存的负面影响。然而，反应的幅度受到携带卵子的母亲所经历的温度和盐度条件的调节。表现也因队列而异，这可能反映了遗传变异和/或胚胎发生前的母体条件。这项研究有助于了解人为改变母体环境如何驱动育雏动物的后代表现。
