Departamento de Biología de Organismos y Sistemas, Universidad de Oviedo, Oviedo, Spain.
Centre for Ecology and Conservation, University of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2024 Oct 24;19(10):e0312048. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0312048. eCollection 2024.
Life history traits determine the organismal abundance within a population and are affected by the presence of trade-offs that modify relationships between traits. These relationships can vary across different environments either by local adaptation or phenotypic plasticity. Reproductive traits have direct fitness implications and therefore are suitable to study among population variation linked to environmental differences. Factors such as altitude are often related to differences in key physical factors like ambient temperature or the subsequent duration of the suitable period for annual activity. The aim of this work was to compare reproductive investment in females of the field cricket Gryllus campestris originated from different altitudes, but without identifying the components (genetic vs. phenotypic) of the analysed variables. This species has an annual cycle; after a winter diapause, adults emerge to breed by early mid spring to produce a new generation of nymphs. The study used females collected at the start of the 2021 breeding season, from 10 populations living in the Cantabrian region (Northern Spain). Five of them were located in areas under 170m a.s.l. and the other five above 1100m. Females were allowed to mate with a male from the same population and to lay eggs that we then collected to estimate egg mass and laying rate; both traits were analysed controlling for female size. We found no effect of altitude on any of the three measured traits, female size, egg mass, and laying rate, as well as on the relationships between each pair or traits. Our results suggest that this species is tolerant to environmental variation for the measured traits, showing that it has mechanisms to cope with a range of ambient temperatures.
生活史特征决定了种群中生物个体的丰度，并受到权衡关系的影响，这些关系会因环境差异而发生变化。这些关系可以通过局部适应或表型可塑性在不同环境中发生变化。生殖特征与直接适合度有关，因此适合在与环境差异相关的种群变异中进行研究。海拔等因素通常与环境差异有关，例如环境温度或适合年度活动的时间长短。本研究的目的是比较来自不同海拔高度的田间蟋蟀 Gryllus campestris 雌性个体的生殖投资，但没有确定分析变量的组成部分（遗传与表型）。该物种具有年度周期；经过冬季休眠后，成虫在早春早期出现繁殖，产生新一代若虫。本研究使用了在 2021 年繁殖季节开始时收集的雌性个体，来自生活在坎塔布里亚地区（西班牙北部）的 10 个种群。其中五个种群位于海拔 170 米以下的地区，另外五个位于海拔 1100 米以上的地区。雌性个体被允许与来自同一种群的雄性个体交配并产卵，然后我们收集这些卵来估计卵的质量和产卵率；我们控制了雌性个体的大小来分析这两个特征。我们没有发现海拔对三个测量特征、雌性大小、卵质量和产卵率以及每个特征对之间的关系有任何影响。我们的结果表明，该物种对所测量的特征具有环境变化的耐受性，表明它具有应对一系列环境温度的机制。
