Maternal Effects in a Wild Songbird Are Environmentally Plastic but Only Marginally Alter the Rate of Adaptation
Authored by Marleen M P Cobben, Thomas E Reed, Jip J C Ramakers, Piter Bijma, Marcel E Visser, Phillip Gienapp
Date Published: 2018
DOI: 10.1086/696847
Sponsors:
European Research Council (ERC)
Platforms:
R
Model Documentation:
Other Narrative
Mathematical description
Model Code URLs:
https://www-journals-uchicago-edu.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/doi/suppl/10.1086/696847/suppl_file/57399Appendix.pdf
Abstract
Despite ample evidence for the presence of maternal effects (MEs) in a
variety of traits and strong theoretical indications for their
evolutionary consequences, empirical evidence to what extent MEs can
influence evolutionary responses to selection remains ambiguous. We
tested the degree to which MEs can alter the rate of adaptation of a key
life-history trait, clutch size, using an individual-based model
approach parameterized with experimental data from a long-term study of
great tits (Parus major). We modeled two types of MEs: (i) an
environmentally plastic ME, in which the relationship between maternal
and offspring clutch size depended on the maternal environment via
offspring condition, and (ii) a fixed ME, in which this relationship was
constant. Although both types of ME affected the rate of adaptation
following an abrupt environmental shift, the overall effects were small.
We conclude that evolutionary consequences of MEs are modest at best in
our study system, at least for the trait and the particular type of ME
we considered here. A closer link between theoretical and empirical work
on MEs would hence be useful to obtain accurate predictions about the
evolutionary consequences of MEs more generally.
Tags
Adaptation
Evolution
phenotypic plasticity
evolutionary dynamics
Climate-change
Dna methylation
Genetic-variation
Natural-populations
Clutch size
Parus-major
Great tits
Quantitative genetics
Environmental shift
Maternal
inheritance
Plastic maternal effect
Postfledging survival