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Body size-specific maternal effects on the offspring environment shape juvenile phenotypes in Atlantic salmon

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Abstract

Positive associations between maternal investment per offspring and maternal body size have been explained as adaptive responses by females to predictable, body size-specific maternal influences on the offspring’s environment. As a larger per-offspring investment increases maternal fitness when the quality of the offspring environment is low, optimal egg size may increase with maternal body size if larger mothers create relatively poor environments for their eggs or offspring. Here, we manipulate egg size and rearing environments (gravel size, nest depth) of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) in a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial experiment. We find that the incubation environment typical of large and small mothers can exert predictable effects on offspring phenotypes, but the nature of these effects provides little support to the prediction that smaller eggs are better suited to nest environments created by smaller females (and vice versa). Our data indicate that the magnitude and direction of phenotypic differences between small and large offspring vary among maternal nest environments, underscoring the point that removal of offspring from the environmental context in which they are provisioned in the wild can bias experimentally derived associations between offspring size and metrics of offspring fitness. The present study also contributes to a growing literature which suggests that the fitness consequences of egg size variation are often more pronounced during the early juvenile stage, as opposed to the egg or larval stage.

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Acknowledgments

We thank M. Yates, S. Mogensen, D. Keith, P. Debes, J. Porter, A.L. Houde and J. Eddington for laboratory assistance, as well as three anonymous reviewers for their critical comments. Research was also supported by Beth Lenentine and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Animal use was approved by the Dalhousie University Committee on Laboratory Animals. Research was funded by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Discovery grant to J.A. Hutchings, and by an Alexander Graham Bell Natural Sciences and Engineering Council grant to N. Rollinson.

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  1. Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, B3H 4J1, Canada

    Njal Rollinson & Jeffrey A. Hutchings

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  1. Njal Rollinson
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  2. Jeffrey A. Hutchings
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Correspondence to Njal Rollinson.

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Communicated by Marc Mangel.

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Rollinson, N., Hutchings, J.A. Body size-specific maternal effects on the offspring environment shape juvenile phenotypes in Atlantic salmon. Oecologia 166, 889–898 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-011-1945-9

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