Environmental conditions change constantly either by anthropogenic perturbation or naturally across space and time.Often,a change in behavior is the frst response to changing conditions.Behavioral fexibility can poten...Environmental conditions change constantly either by anthropogenic perturbation or naturally across space and time.Often,a change in behavior is the frst response to changing conditions.Behavioral fexibility can potentially improve an organism’s chances to survive and reproduce.Currently,we lack an understanding on the time-scale such behavioral adjustments need,how they actually affect reproduction and survival and whether behavioral adjustments are suffcient in keeping up with changing conditions.We used house mice(Mus musculus)to test whether personality and life-history traits can adjust to an experimentally induced food-switch fexibly in adulthood or by intergenerational plasticity,that is,adjustments only becoming visible in the offspring generation.Mice lived in 6 experimental populations of semi-natural environments either on high or standard quality food for 4 generations.We showed previously that high-quality food induced better conditions and a less risk-prone personality.Here,we tested whether the speed and/or magnitude of adjustment shows condition-dependency and whether adjustments incur ftness effects.Life-history but not personality traits reacted fexibly to a food-switch,primarily by a direct reduction of reproduction and sloweddown growth.Offspring whose parents received a food-switch developed a more active stress-coping personality and gained weight at a slower rate compared with their respective controls.Furthermore,the modulation of most traits was condition-dependent,with animals previously fed with high-quality food showing stronger responses.Our study highlights that life-history and personality traits adjust at different speed toward environmental change,thus,highlighting the importance of the environment and the mode of response for evolutionary models.展开更多
文摘Environmental conditions change constantly either by anthropogenic perturbation or naturally across space and time.Often,a change in behavior is the frst response to changing conditions.Behavioral fexibility can potentially improve an organism’s chances to survive and reproduce.Currently,we lack an understanding on the time-scale such behavioral adjustments need,how they actually affect reproduction and survival and whether behavioral adjustments are suffcient in keeping up with changing conditions.We used house mice(Mus musculus)to test whether personality and life-history traits can adjust to an experimentally induced food-switch fexibly in adulthood or by intergenerational plasticity,that is,adjustments only becoming visible in the offspring generation.Mice lived in 6 experimental populations of semi-natural environments either on high or standard quality food for 4 generations.We showed previously that high-quality food induced better conditions and a less risk-prone personality.Here,we tested whether the speed and/or magnitude of adjustment shows condition-dependency and whether adjustments incur ftness effects.Life-history but not personality traits reacted fexibly to a food-switch,primarily by a direct reduction of reproduction and sloweddown growth.Offspring whose parents received a food-switch developed a more active stress-coping personality and gained weight at a slower rate compared with their respective controls.Furthermore,the modulation of most traits was condition-dependent,with animals previously fed with high-quality food showing stronger responses.Our study highlights that life-history and personality traits adjust at different speed toward environmental change,thus,highlighting the importance of the environment and the mode of response for evolutionary models.
