Transgenerational effects of grandparental and parental diets combine with early-life learning to shape adaptive foraging phenotypes in Amblyseius swirskii

Author(s)
Peter Schausberger, Dalila Rendon Castaneda
Abstract

Transgenerational effects abound in animals. While a great deal of research has been dedicated to the effects of maternal stressors such as diet deficiency, social deprivation or predation risk on offspring phenotypes, we have a poor understanding of the adaptive value of transgenerational effects spanning across multiple generations under benign conditions and the relative weight of multigenerational effects. Here we show that grandparental and parental diet experiences combine with personal early-life learning to form adaptive foraging phenotypes in adult plant-inhabiting predatory mites Amblyseius swirskii. Our findings provide insights into transgenerational plasticity caused by persistent versus varying conditions in multiple ancestral generations and show that transgenerational effects may be adaptive in non-matching ancestor and offspring environments.

Organisation(s)
Department of Behavioral and Cognitive Biology
Journal
Communications Biology
Volume
5
No. of pages
10
ISSN
2399-3642
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-022-03200-7
Publication date
03-2022
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
106051 Behavioural biology
Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Agricultural and Biological Sciences(all), Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology(all), Medicine (miscellaneous)
Portal url
https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/transgenerational-effects-of-grandparental-and-parental-diets-combine-with-earlylife-learning-to-shape-adaptive-foraging-phenotypes-in-amblyseius-swirskii(7be03fb1-73d4-418d-a9bc-aa21911f8378).html