Abstract
Clonally reproducing animals, such as freshwater hydra, can achieve very quick population growth, potentially resulting in high density when dispersal is limited. The reproductive value of any offspring produced clonally in such a high density population is low because of the strong competition for food. Therefore, animals experiencing such conditions should allocate their resources to self-maintenance, to increase survival chances. Increased allocation to self-maintenance in turn should enable animals to withstand higher levels of genotoxic stress. To test this prediction, we exposed green hydra (Hydra viridissima Pallas 1766) to a perceived high density (by keeping them in crowded culture medium) or low density (fresh culture medium) without altering food availability. We also manipulated nutritional status (by starving animals for different time periods) and previous exposure to mild stress in a full factorial experimental design. At the end of the experiment we exposed animals to a high concentration of hydrogen-peroxide and scored stress tolerance. We found that stress tolerance is greatly elevated in animals perceiving high density, confirming our prediction. Stress tolerance decreased in animals starved for a few days, suggesting that the ability to maintain an elevated stress tolerance function has nutritional costs and is possible only when resource availability is high. On the other hand, previous exposure to mild stress had a small effect on the ability to tolerate subsequent exposure to stress, and only in the low density treatment group. Thus, stress tolerance in hydra is dynamically modulated in response to social, environmental and nutritional cues.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Diane Bridge and several anonymous referees for helpful comments on a previous version of this manuscript. This research was supported by the European Union and the State of Hungary, co-financed by the European Social Fund in the framework of TÁMOP-4.2.4.A/2-11/1-2012-0001 `National Excellence Program’. Further support was provided by the TÁMOP-4.2.2/B-10/1-2010-0024, TÁMOP-4.2.1/B-09/1/KONV-2010-0007 and TÁMOP 4.2.2.C-11/1/KONV-2012-0010 projects. The projects are co-financed by the European Social Fund and the European Regional Development Fund. ZB was supported by a Hungarian Research Fund grant (OTKA K75696). Our experiments with hydra fully comply with Hungarian national regulations on experiments with animals.
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Tökölyi, J., Rosa, M.E., Bradács, F. et al. Life history trade-offs and stress tolerance in green hydra (Hydra viridissima Pallas 1766): the importance of nutritional status and perceived population density. Ecol Res 29, 867–876 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11284-014-1176-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11284-014-1176-8