A novel larval diet interacts with nutritional stress to modify juvenile behaviors and glucocorticoid responses.

ABSTRACT: Developmental plasticity can allow the exploitation of alternative diets. While such flexibility during early life is often adaptive, it can leave a legacy in later life that alters the overall health and fitness of an individual. Species of the spadefoot toad genus Spea are uniquely poised to address such carryover effects because their larvae can consume drastically different diets: their ancestral diet of detritus or a derived shrimp diet. Here, we use Spea bombifrons to assess the effects of developmental plasticity in response to larval diet type and nutritional stress on juvenile behaviors and stress axis reactivity. We find that, in an open-field assay, juveniles fed shrimp as larvae have longer latencies to move, avoid prey items more often, and have poorer pre

SUBMITTER: Ledon-Rettig CC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8366881 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature