Transgenerational effects act on a wide range of insects' life-history traits and can be involved in the control of developmental plasticity, such as diapause expression. Decrease in or total loss of winter diapause expression recently observed in some species could arise from inhibiting maternal effects. In this study, we explored transgenerational effects on diapause expression and traits in one commercial and one Canadian field strain of the aphid parasitoid Aphidius ervi. These strains were reared under short photoperiod (8:16 h LD) and low temperature (14 °C) conditions over two generations. Diapause levels, developmental times, physiological and morphological traits were measured. Diapause levels increased after one generation in the Canadian field but not in the commercial strain. For both strains, the second generation took longer to develop than the first one. Tibia length and wing surface decreased over generations while fat content increased. A crossed-generations experiment focusing on the industrial parasitoid strain showed that offspring from mothers reared at 14 °C took longer to develop, were heavier, taller with wider wings and with more fat reserves than those from mothers

Measuring changes in surface body temperature (specifically in eye-region) in vertebrates using infrared thermography is increasingly applied for detection of the stress reaction. Here we investigated the relationship between the eye-region temperature (TEYE; measured with infrared thermography), the corticosterone level in blood (CORT; stress indicator in birds), and some covariates (ambient temperature, humidity, and sex/body size) in a High-Arctic seabird, the Little Auk Alle alle. The birds responded to the capture-restrain protocol (blood sampling at the moment of capturing, and after 30 min of restrain) by a significant TEYE and CORT increase. However, the strength of the TEYE and CORT response to acute stress were not correlated. It confirms the results of a recent study on other species and all together indicates that infrared thermography is a useful, non-invasive measure of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis reactivity under acute activation, but it might not be a suitable proxy for natural variation of circulating glucocorticoid levels.