The Effects of Temperature and Diet during Development, Adulthood, and Mating on Reproduction in the Red Flour Beetle

Abstract

The effects of different temperatures and diets experienced during distinct life stages are not necessarily similar. The silver-spoon hypothesis predicts that developing under favorable conditions will always lead to better performing adults under all adult conditions. The environment-matching hypothesis suggests that a match between developmental and adult conditions will lead to the best performing adults. Similar to the latter hypothesis, the beneficial-acclimation hypothesis suggests that either developing or acclimating as adults to the test temperature will improve later performance under such temperature. We disentangled here between the effect of growth, adult, and mating conditions (temperature and diet) on reproduction in the red flour beetle (Tribolium castaneum), in reference to the reproduction success rate, the number of viable offspring produced, and the mean offspring mass 13 days after mating. The most influential stage affecting reproduction differed between the diet and temperature experiments: adult temperature vs. parental growth diet. Generally, a yeast-rich diet or warmer temperature improved reproduction, supporting the silver-spoon hypothesis. However, interactions between life stages made the results more complex, also fitting the environment-matching hypothesis. Warm growth temperature positively affected reproduction success, but only when adults were kept under the same warm temperature. When the parental growth and adult diets matched, the mean offspring mass was greater than in a mismatch between the two. Additionally, a match between warm adult temperature and warm offspring growth temperature led to the largest offspring mass. These findings support the environment-matching hypothesis. Our results provide evidence for all these hypotheses and demonstrate that parental effects and plasticity may be induced by temperature and diet.

Differential effects of developmental thermal plasticity across three generations of guppies (Poecilia reticulata): canalization and anticipatory matching

“…The immediate offspring environment early in development may also affect phenotypes when, for example, conditions are extreme and cause physiological damage or, vice versa, favourable conditions during early development may lead to better performing adults 74, 75 . Similar to above, however, if these factors played a role in the responses of our guppies it would have been expected that there were consistent differences between fish from different developmental temperature treatments across generations, because the environments stayed constant.…”

Parental exposure modulates the effects of UV‐B on offspring in guppies

“…Such effects occur in response to maternal diet, for example (Bhagat, Fortna & Browning ; Scharf et al . ), and it is possible that maternally produced ROS induced antioxidant capacities in her unborn offspring. Early exposure may be viewed as a form of hormetic priming (Constantini ) whereby resilience to a harmful environmental agent is increased following early exposure to low doses of that agent.…”

“…In addition, there may have been direct effects from the mother on the offspring before birth. Such effects occur in response to maternal diet, for example (Bhagat, Fortna & Browning 2015;Scharf et al 2015), and it is possible that maternally produced ROS induced antioxidant capacities in her unborn offspring.…”

Context‐dependent effects of cold stress on behavioral, physiological, and life‐history traits of the red flour beetle

“…The adult pairs were removed after 3 d, and the number of larvae, their occurrence and total body mass were measured 9 d following onset of the experiment (BBX 22, Boeco, Hamburg, Germany; accuracy of 0.01 mg). Due to high egg cannibalism in T. castaneum and the occurrence of infertile eggs, we preferred to count larvae as they better reflect the number of offspring potentially reaching adult stage (Lloyd et al ., ; Alabi et al ., ; similar to Scharf et al ., ). We used a χ 2 test to analyze pair reproduction data and ANCOVA for the number of larvae produced and the mean larval mass.…”