Influence of maternal food availability on offspring dispersal

Massot, M.; Clobert, Jean

doi:10.1007/bf00170589

Cited by 85 publications

(82 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…A review of stream insect response to predation showed however that increased or decreased emigration behaviours can be expected depending on the prey and predator species [63]. On the other hand, maternal effects have shown to influence offspring dispersal [25,[65][66][67][68]. For example, a differential transfer of maternal yolk androgens in response to parasitism has been shown to modify offspring dispersal in great tits [65].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Maternal exposure to predator scents: offspring phenotypic adjustment and dispersal

et al. 2014

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Predation is a strong selective pressure generating morphological, physiological and behavioural responses in organisms. As predation risk is often higher during juvenile stages, antipredator defences expressed early in life are paramount to survival. Maternal effects are an efficient pathway to produce such defences. We investigated whether maternal exposure to predator cues during gestation affected juvenile morphology, behaviour and dispersal in common lizards (Zootoca vivipara). We exposed 21 gravid females to saurophagous snake cues for one month while 21 females remained unexposed (i.e. control). We measured body size, preferred temperature and activity level for each neonate, and released them into semi-natural enclosures connected to corridors in order to measure dispersal. Offspring from exposed mothers grew longer tails, selected lower temperatures and dispersed thrice more than offspring from unexposed mothers. Because both tail autotomy and altered thermoregulatory behaviour are common antipredator tactics in lizards, these results suggest that mothers adjusted offspring phenotype to risky natal environments (tail length) or increased risk avoidance (dispersal). Although maternal effects can be passive consequences of maternal stress, our results strongly militate for them to be an adaptive antipredator response that may increase offspring survival prospects.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Maternal exposure to predator scents: offspring phenotypic adjustment and dispersal

et al. 2014

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“…In the common lizard, parasitized mothers produce more philopatric female offspring (26). Conversely, in the same species, well fed mothers produce a larger fraction of dispersing offspring, with no sex effect (14). However, there are alternative explanations for these observed patterns of dispersal, such as a differential cost of producing dispersing and resident offspring.…”

Section: Generalization: Maternal Quality As a Source Of Habitat Hetementioning

confidence: 99%

“…We first suppose that the species is parthogenetic or that the species reproduces sexually but offspring movement is under maternal genotype control. Maternal control of seed dispersal is obvious in plants, and several cases of maternal effects on offspring dispersal have been reported in animal species (13)(14)(15)(16). We later relax this assumption and consider a species reproducing sexually in which juveniles control their own dispersal behavior.…”

Section: A Theoretical Model Of Age-dependent Dispersalmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Natal dispersal and senescence

Ronce

Clobert

Massot

1998

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

106

140

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The potential existence of natal dispersal strategies depending on parental age has been suggested by Hamilton and May [Hamilton, W. D. & May, R. M. (1977) Nature 269, 578-581] for organisms whose survival rates decline with age. When competition between parent and offspring is strong, any individual should disperse a smaller fraction of its offspring when it ages. Here, we verify their verbal prediction. First, we determine the evolutionarily stable dispersal strategy conditional on parental age, associated with a particular senescence curve. We show that such a conditional dispersal strategy should evolve independently from the genotype controlling the offspring dispersal behavior. Second, studying a population of common lizards, we provide empirical evidence of a relation between dispersal of female offspring and maternal senescence, in agreement with our theoretical predictions.In a spatially structured population, the reproductive success of a breeding individual depends on the fraction of its offspring that stay at the parental site or emigrate to breed elsewhere. As a consequence, numerous allocation decisions for parents, such as offspring sex ratio (1), optimal clutch size (2), or reproductive effort (3), have been predicted to depend on offspring movement. Conversely, the offspring dispersal rate is likely to be, itself, a character under selection (4-7), and its evolution has been shown to depend, in some instances, on other life history traits, such as fecundity or adult survival (5,7,8). Therefore, the offspring dispersal rate, or natal dispersal rate, can be considered as a particular allocation decision, being part of the general reproductive strategy adopted by a species.Life history theory predicts that allocation decisions, made by a breeding individual, should vary with its age for two reasons. First, decisions at one age affect possible decisions later in life because of the cost of reproduction for instance (9). Second, the optimal allocation strategy at each age may depend ultimately on the age-specific survival probability of the parent (10). In agreement with theoretical predictions, empirical studies have shown that reproductive effort, offspring size (11), and offspring sex ratio (12) depend on maternal age in numerous species. However, we are not aware of any study investigating the relation of natal dispersal to maternal age.Yet, in their seminal paper on the evolution of dispersal, Hamilton and May (4) suggest the possible existence of agedependent dispersal strategies. According to the assumptions of their simple model, juveniles can establish only in sites freed by the death of an adult. If adults experience senescence and their survival probability declines with age, any individual should disperse a smaller fraction of its offspring when it ages as the probability of local recruitment by philopatric offspring at the parental site increases. Nevertheless, these verbal arguments never have been verified theoretically, nor has such a pattern of dispersal ever been documented ...

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“…Furthermore, we show that parental influence on offspring dispersal distance is as important as the offspring's environment on dispersal decisions [22,53]. Parents can use a cue that normally promotes dispersal, such as density, and transmit that information to their offspring so that the offspring have a 'head-start' in their response to their own environmental conditions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Dispersal distance is influenced by parental and grand-parental density

et al. 2014

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Non-genetic transmission of information across generations, so-called parental effects, can have significant impacts on offspring morphology, physiology, behaviour and life-history traits. In previous experimental work using the two-spotted spider mite Tetranychus urticae Koch, we demonstrated that dispersal distances increase with local density and levels of genetic relatedness. We here show that manipulation of parental and grand-parental density has a significant effect on offspring dispersal distance, of the same order of magnitude as manipulation of offspring density. We demonstrate that offspring exposed to the same density disperse further if they were born to parents exposed to higher density compared with parents exposed to low density. Offspring dispersal distance also increases when grand-parents were exposed to higher density, except for offspring exposed to low densities, which disperse at shorter distances whatever the grand-parental density. We also show that offspring from mothers exposed to higher densities were overall larger, which suggests that parents in high densities invest more in individual offspring, enabling them to disperse further. We propose that our findings should be included in models investigating the spread rate of invasive species or when predicting the success of conservation measures of species attempting to track changing climates.

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Influence of maternal food availability on offspring dispersal

Cited by 85 publications

References 43 publications

Maternal exposure to predator scents: offspring phenotypic adjustment and dispersal

Maternal exposure to predator scents: offspring phenotypic adjustment and dispersal

Natal dispersal and senescence

Dispersal distance is influenced by parental and grand-parental density

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