Clutch quality is related to embryonic development duration, hatchling body size and telomere length in the spined toad (Bufo spinosus)

Abstract

Reproductive success is often related to parental quality, a parameter expressed through various traits, such as site selection, mate selection and energetic investment in the eggs or progeny. Owing to the complex interactions between environmental and parental characteristics occurring at various stages of the reproductive event, it is often complicated to tease apart the relative contributions of these different factors to reproductive success. Study systems where these complex interactions are simplified (e.g. absence of parental care) can help us to understand how metrics of parental quality (e.g. gamete and egg quality) influence reproductive success. Using such a study system in a common garden experiment, we investigated the relationships between clutch hatching success (a proxy of clutch quality) and offspring quality in an amphibian species lacking post-oviposition parental care. We found a relationship between clutch quality and embryonic development duration and hatchling phenotype. We found that hatchling telomere length was linked to hatching success. These results suggest that clutch quality is linked to early life traits in larval amphibians and that deciphering the influence of parental traits on the patterns we detected is a promising avenue of research.

Telomeres in a spatial context: a tool for understanding ageing pattern variation in wild populations

“…In wild populations, shorter telomeres are generally associated with increased mortality risk, although current knowledge is mostly restricted to birds and mammals, and the relationship has been shown to be context‐dependent in some cases (McLennan et al 2017, Wilbourn et al 2018). Also, telomere length can help to predict important life‐history traits such as lifespan (in birds: Heidinger et al 2012, Bichet et al 2020, in mammals: van Lieshout et al 2019), lifetime reproductive success (in birds: Eastwood et al 2019) or individual quality (foraging behaviour, body size or hatching success; in birds: Angelier et al 2019; in reptiles: Rollings et al 2017; in amphibians: Cheron et al 2021). However, despite that some studies highlight the relevance of telomeres as markers of survival and health status, further research is needed as their predictive value has not been explored broadly across taxa and species‐specific differences might exist (Wilbourn et al 2018, Chatelain et al 2020).…”

Lizards from warm and declining populations are born with extremely short telomeres

“…Importantly, this alteration of telomere dynamics may induce greater annual mortality risks of lizards ( 49 ), including in this species ( 23 ) and the drop of female reproductive effort ( 37 ), in line with general evidence linking TL with individual quality across vertebrates ( 22 , 38 ). Reproductive success is also known to positively correlate with TL in some species ( 50 ) and specifically to the capacity of females to mount antioxidant shielding among our sampled lizard populations ( 51 ). This relationship between TL and reproduction involves both TL as a biomarker of individual quality to produce offspring (positive association between TL and reproduction) and TL as a mediator of reproductive costs (positive association between reproduction and TL shortening) between species ( 52 ).…”

What are the contributions of maternal and paternal traits to fecundity and offspring development? A case study in an amphibian species, the spined toadBufo spinosus

“…The clutch of B. spinosus is formed by elongated egg strings containing 3,000–5,000 eggs ( Cheron et al 2021a ). In order to assess the fecundity of each amplexus, each egg string was placed in a container (35 × 20 × 25 cm) containing 2 cm of dechlorinated tap water and a scale (graph paper).…”

“…We used morphological features to classify developmental stages according to Gosner (1960) . We selected Gosner stages 25, 30, 37, 41, and 42 (hereafter, GS 25, GS 30, GS 37, GS 41, and GS 42, respectively) in order to monitor larval development ( Cheron et al 2021a ). For each stage, we measured the total length and tail length following Cheron et al (2021a) .…”