scholarly journals Evolutionary trade-off in reproduction of Cambrian arthropods

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (18) ◽  
pp. eaaz3376 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qiang Ou ◽  
Jean Vannier ◽  
Xianfeng Yang ◽  
Ailin Chen ◽  
Huijuan Mai ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Marine Ecosystem ◽  
Reproductive Investment ◽  
Life History Strategies ◽  
Middle Cambrian ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Offspring Number ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Evolution Of Life ◽  
Individual Offspring ◽  
Ecosystem Changes

Trade-offs play a crucial role in the evolution of life-history strategies of extant organisms by shaping traits such as growth pattern, reproductive investment, and lifespan. One important trade-off is between offspring number and energy (nutrition, parental care, etc.) allocated to individual offspring. Exceptional Cambrian fossils allowed us to trace the earliest evidence of trade-offs in arthropod reproduction. †Chuandianella ovata, from the early Cambrian Chengjiang biota of China, brooded numerous (≤100 per clutch), small (Ø, ~0.5 mm) eggs under carapace flaps. The closely related †Waptia fieldensis, from the middle Cambrian Burgess Shale of Canada, also brooded young, but carried fewer (≤ 26 per clutch), larger (Ø, ~2.0 mm) eggs. The notable differences in clutch/egg sizes between these two species suggest an evolutionary trade-off between quantity and quality of offspring. The shift toward fewer, larger eggs might be an adaptive response to marine ecosystem changes through the early-middle Cambrian. We hypothesize that reproductive trade-offs might have facilitated the evolutionary success of early arthropods.

scholarly journals Enzymatic antioxidants but not baseline glucocorticoids mediate the reproduction–survival trade-off in a wild bird

2018 ◽  
Vol 285 (1892) ◽  
pp. 20182141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefania Casagrande ◽  
Michaela Hau
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Body Condition ◽  
Redox State ◽  
Reproductive Investment ◽  
Redox System ◽  
Reactive Oxygen Metabolites ◽  
Enzymatic Antioxidants ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Nest Provisioning

The trade-off between reproductive investment and survival is central to life-history theory, but the relative importance and the complex interactions among the physiological mechanisms mediating it are still debated. Here we experimentally tested whether baseline glucocorticoid hormones, the redox system or their interaction mediate reproductive investment–survival trade-offs in wild great tits ( Parus major ). We increased the workload of parental males by clipping three feathers on each wing, and 5 days later determined effects on baseline corticosterone concentrations (Cort), redox state (reactive oxygen metabolites, protein carbonyls, glutathione peroxidase [GPx], total non-enzymatic antioxidants), body mass, body condition, reproductive success and survival. Feather-clipping did not affect fledgling numbers, chick body condition, nest provisioning rates or survival compared with controls. However, feather-clipped males lost mass and increased both Cort and GPx concentrations. Within feather-clipped individuals, GPx increases were positively associated with reproductive investment (i.e. male nest provisioning). Furthermore, within all individuals, males that increased GPx suffered reduced survival rates. Baseline Cort increases were related to mass loss but not to redox state, nest provisioning or male survival. Our findings provide experimental evidence that changes in the redox system are associated with the trade-off between reproductive investment and survival, while baseline Cort may support this trade-off indirectly through a link with body condition. These results also emphasize that plastic changes in individuals, rather than static levels of physiological signals, may mediate life-history trade-offs.

scholarly journals Warmer temperatures attenuate the classic offspring number and reproductive investment trade-off in the common lizard, Zootoca vivipara

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 20160101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexis Rutschmann ◽  
Donald B. Miles ◽  
Jean Clobert ◽  
Murielle Richard
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Environmental Conditions ◽  
Life History Traits ◽  
Natural Populations ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Offspring Number ◽  
Common Lizard ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Zootoca Vivipara ◽  
The Common

Life-history traits involved in trade-offs are known to vary with environmental conditions. Here, we evaluate the response of the trade-off between ‘offspring number’ versus ‘energy invested per offspring’ to ambient temperature in 11 natural populations of the common lizard, Zootoca vivipara . We provide evidence at both the intra- and interpopulation levels that the trade-off is reduced with an increase in air temperature. If this effect enhances current individual fitness, it may lead to an accelerated pace of life in warmer environments and could ultimately increase adult mortality. In the context of global warming, our results advocate the need for more studies in natural populations to explore interactions between life-history traits' trade-offs and environmental conditions.

scholarly journals Cuckoos, cowbirds and hosts: adaptations, trade-offs and constraints

2006 ◽  
Vol 362 (1486) ◽  
pp. 1873-1886 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Krüger
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Brood Parasitism ◽  
Reproductive Strategies ◽  
Life History Theory ◽  
Model Systems ◽  
Life History Strategies ◽  
Host System ◽  
Brood Parasites ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Evolution Of Life

The interactions between brood parasitic birds and their host species provide one of the best model systems for coevolution. Despite being intensively studied, the parasite–host system provides ample opportunities to test new predictions from both coevolutionary theory as well as life-history theory in general. I identify four main areas that might be especially fruitful: cuckoo female gentes as alternative reproductive strategies, non-random and nonlinear risks of brood parasitism for host individuals, host parental quality and targeted brood parasitism, and differences and similarities between predation risk and parasitism risk. Rather than being a rare and intriguing system to study coevolutionary processes, I believe that avian brood parasites and their hosts are much more important as extreme cases in the evolution of life-history strategies. They provide unique examples of trade-offs and situations where constraints are either completely removed or particularly severe.

scholarly journals Telomeres positively correlate with pace-of-life and elongate with age in a wild mammal

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathilde Tissier ◽  
Patrick Bergeron ◽  
Dany Garant ◽  
Sandrine Zahn ◽  
Francois Criscuolo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Resource Allocation ◽  
Life History ◽  
Life Histories ◽  
Life History Strategies ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Pace Of Life ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Proactive Behaviour ◽  
Anti Cancer ◽  
Fast Pace

Understanding ageing and the diversity of life histories is a cornerstone in biology. Telomeres, the protecting caps of chromosomes, are thought to be involved in ageing, cancer risks and to modulate life-history strategies. They shorten with cell division and age in somatic tissues of most species, possibly limiting lifespan. The resource allocation trade-off hypothesis predicts that short telomeres have thus co-evolved with early reproduction, proactive behaviour and reduced lifespan, i.e. a fast Pace-of-Life Syndrome (POLS). Conversely, since short telomeres may also reduce the risks of cancer, the anti-cancer hypothesis advances that they should be associated with slow POLS. Conclusion on which hypothesis best supports the role of telomeres as mediators of life-history strategies is hampered by a lack of study on wild short-lived vertebrates, apart from birds. Using seven years of data on wild Eastern chipmunks Tamias striatus, we highlighted that telomeres elongate with age and do not limit lifespan in this species. Furthermore, short telomeres correlated with a slow POLS in a sex-specific way. Females with short telomeres had a delayed age at first breeding and a lower fecundity rate than females with long telomeres, whereas those differences were not recorded in males. Our findings support most predictions adapted from the anti-cancer hypothesis, but none of those made under the resource allocation trade-off hypothesis. Results are in line with an increasing body of evidence suggesting that resource allocation trade-offs alone cannot explaining the diversity of telomere length in adult somatic cells and life-histories observed across the tree of life.

Offspring Size and Number

2001 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank J. Messina ◽  
Charles W. Fox
Keyword(s):  
Marine Invertebrates ◽  
Offspring Size ◽  
Fixed Amount ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Offspring Number ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Primary Determinant ◽  
Survival And Reproduction ◽  
Future Reproduction ◽  
Broad Variation

If we look across all organisms, we find that some species produce only one or a few large offspring per reproductive bout (e.g., most birds and mammals), others produce 10s or 100s of intermediatesize offspring (e.g., most plants and insects), and yet others produce many 1000s of offspring (e.g., some marine invertebrates). How can we account for such broad variation? In this chapter, we review many of the environmental and demographic variables that influence the evolution of offspring size and number. In the first section, we discuss how the trade-off between offspring size and number is an important determinant of offspring size. An individual’s resources can be allocated to three basic functions— growth, somatic maintenance, or reproduction. Resources directed toward reproduction can in turn be used to produce either many small offspring or a few large offspring. Thus, for a fixed amount of resources available for reproduction, it necessarily follows that there is a trade-off between the number and size of offspring during a given bout of reproduction. Trade-offs between offspring size and number during a single reproductive bout are a primary determinant of offspring size for most semelparous organisms, which reproduce once in their lifetime (e.g., salmon and century plants). For iteroparous organisms, however, lifetime reproduction is divided into many discrete bouts, with intervening periods of no reproduction. Evolutionary explanations for the number and size of offspring in these organisms must also consider how reproductive effort during any one period affects future survival and reproduction. The second part of our chapter considers the evolution of offspring number among long-lived, iteroparous organisms, especially vertebrates. We focus on the clutch sizes of birds that produce altricial (nidicolous) young. Because each nestling requires much parental care, we expect strong selection toward producing the most appropriate number of offspring for a given environment. The trade-off between current and future reproduction can also affect semelparous animals if offspring must be distributed among scattered resources. Many insects, for example, lay eggs on small, discrete hosts, and their sedentary offspring often cannot move between hosts. A female that places too many eggs on a host faces the same diminishing returns as a bird that produces more nestlings than it can provision.

scholarly journals On Trade-offs and Communal Breeding The Behavioural Ecology of Agta Foragers

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abigail Emma Page
Keyword(s):  
Life History Strategies ◽  
Energy Budgets ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Network Centrality ◽  
Communal Breeding ◽  
Household Energy ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Adaptive Value ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Fitness Consequences

Time is finite and no organism can avoid the allocation dilemma that this necessarily entails. A quintessential trade-off is that between parental investment and reproduction, otherwise known as the quality-quantity trade-off. However, humans may be exceptional among apes given our high quantity production of high quality offspring. This success has been argued only to be possible by breeding communally. In this thesis I explore questions surrounding trade-offs, communal breeding and their fitness consequences in a small-scale foraging society, the Agta. The first analysis examines the composition of Agta childcare using an innovative form of data collection to maximise sample sizes, previously a major limitation in hunter-gatherer research. The Agta, like many small-scale societies are prolific communal breeders. However, contra previous conclusions, juveniles and non-kin appeared to provide more allocare than grandmothers. Interactions with non-kin were associated with significant decreases in maternal workload, while interactions with siblings and grandmothers were not. The next analysis explores why both kin and non-kin behave cooperatively, finding support for kin selection among close kin and reciprocity for distant kin and non-kin allocare. Communal breeding appears to be an important mechanism to ensure enough childcare was received in the absence of other strategies to counter shortfalls in household energy budgets. The next analysis asks, what are the fitness consequences of maternal social networks and allocare? Mothers’ network centrality positively correlated with non-kin allocare as well as reproductive success, revealing the adaptive value of communal breeding. These results highlight the optimising nature of hunter-gatherer cooperation and life history strategies.

scholarly journals Early-late life trade-offs and the evolution of ageing in the wild

2015 ◽  
Vol 282 (1806) ◽  
pp. 20150209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-François Lemaître ◽  
Vérane Berger ◽  
Christophe Bonenfant ◽  
Mathieu Douhard ◽  
Marlène Gamelon ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Late Life ◽  
Life History Strategies ◽  
Antagonistic Pleiotropy ◽  
Fitness Components ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Evolution Of Life ◽  
In The Wild ◽  
Free Ranging ◽  
Early Late ◽  
Growth And Reproduction

Empirical evidence for declines in fitness components (survival and reproductive performance) with age has recently accumulated in wild populations, highlighting that the process of senescence is nearly ubiquitous in the living world. Senescence patterns are highly variable among species and current evolutionary theories of ageing propose that such variation can be accounted for by differences in allocation to growth and reproduction during early life. Here, we compiled 26 studies of free-ranging vertebrate populations that explicitly tested for a trade-off between performance in early and late life. Our review brings overall support for the presence of early-late life trade-offs, suggesting that the limitation of available resources leads individuals to trade somatic maintenance later in life for high allocation to reproduction early in life. We discuss our results in the light of two closely related theories of ageing—the disposable soma and the antagonistic pleiotropy theories—and propose that the principle of energy allocation roots the ageing process in the evolution of life-history strategies. Finally, we outline research topics that should be investigated in future studies, including the importance of natal environmental conditions in the study of trade-offs between early- and late-life performance and the evolution of sex-differences in ageing patterns.

scholarly journals Plasma oxidative stress in reproduction of two eusocial African mole-rat species, the naked mole-rat and the Damaraland mole-rat

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Juan Jacobs ◽  
Daniel William Hart ◽  
Nigel Charles Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Oxidative Stress ◽  
Reproductive Investment ◽  
Redox Balance ◽  
Cost Of Reproduction ◽  
Stress Index ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Mole Rat ◽  
Naked Mole Rat ◽  
Total Antioxidant

AbstractOne of the most prominent life-history trade-offs involves the cost of reproduction. Oxidative stress has been proposed to be involved in this trade-off and has been associated with reduced life span. There is currently an unclear relationship between oxidative cost and the reproduction-longevity trade-off. The current study, using a non-lethal and minimally invasive (only a single blood sample and no euthanasia) method, investigated whether an oxidative cost (oxidative stress) to reproduction would be apparent in two long-lived eusocial mole-rats, the naked mole-rat (NMR), Heterocephalus glaber, and the Damaraland mole-rat (DMR), Fukomys damarensis, where breeding colony members live longer than non-breeder conspecifics. We measured the direct redox balance in plasma by measuring the oxidative stress index (OSI) based on the ratio of total oxidant status and total antioxidant activity in breeders and non-breeders of both sexes, in the two species. NMR had significantly higher OSI between breeders and non-breeders of each sex, whereas DMR showed no significant differences except for total antioxidant capacity (TAC). The mode of reproductive suppression and the degree of reproductive investment in NMR may explain to some degree the redox balance difference between breeders and non-breeders. DMR show minimal physiological changes between breeders and non-breeders except for the mode of reproduction, which may explain some variations in TAC and TOS values, but similar OSI between breeders and non-breeders.

Dual Goals for Speed and Accuracy on the Same Performance Task

2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 118-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olive Emil Wetter ◽  
Jürgen Wegge ◽  
Klaus Jonas ◽  
Klaus-Helmut Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Memory Scanning ◽  
Performance Task ◽  
Performance Tasks ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Test Experiment ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
New Finding ◽  
Sternberg Paradigm ◽  
Speed Accuracy ◽  
Speed And Accuracy

In most work contexts, several performance goals coexist, and conflicts between them and trade-offs can occur. Our paper is the first to contrast a dual goal for speed and accuracy with a single goal for speed on the same task. The Sternberg paradigm (Experiment 1, n = 57) and the d2 test (Experiment 2, n = 19) were used as performance tasks. Speed measures and errors revealed in both experiments that dual as well as single goals increase performance by enhancing memory scanning. However, the single speed goal triggered a speed-accuracy trade-off, favoring speed over accuracy, whereas this was not the case with the dual goal. In difficult trials, dual goals slowed down scanning processes again so that errors could be prevented. This new finding is particularly relevant for security domains, where both aspects have to be managed simultaneously.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document