Environmental variation mediates the evolution of anticipatory parental effects.

ABSTRACT: Theory maintains that when future environment is predictable, parents should adjust the phenotype of their offspring to match the anticipated environment. The plausibility of positive anticipatory parental effects is hotly debated and the experimental evidence for the evolution of such effects is currently lacking. We experimentally investigated the evolution of anticipatory maternal effects in a range of environments that differ drastically in how predictable they are. Populations of the nematode Caenorhabditis remanei, adapted to 20°C, were exposed to a novel temperature (25°C) for 30 generations with either positive or zero correlation between parent and offspring environment. We found that populations evolving in novel environments that were predictable across generations evolve

SUBMITTER: Lind MI 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7403678 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature