The information provided by the absence of cues: insights from Bayesian models of within and transgenerational plasticity

Oecologia volume 194, pages585–596(2020)Cite this article

Abstract

Empirical studies of phenotypic plasticity often use an experimental design in which the subjects in experimental treatments are exposed to cues, while the subjects in control treatments are maintained in the absence of those cues. However, researchers have virtually ignored the question of what, if any, information might be provided to subjects by the absence of the cues in control treatments. We apply basic principles of information-updating to several experimental protocols used to study phenotypic plasticity in response to cues from predators to show why the reliability of the information provided by the absence of those cues in a control treatment might vary as a function of the subjects’ experiences in the experimental treatment. We then analyze Bayesian models designed to mimic fully factorial experimental studies of trans and within-generational plasticity, in which parents, offspring, both or neither are exposed to cues from predators, and the information-states of the offspring in the different groups are compared at the end of the experiment. The models predict that the pattern of differences in offspring information-state across the four treatment groups will vary among experiments, depending on the reliability of the information provided by the control treatment, and the parent’s initial estimate of the value of the state (the parental Prior). We suggest that variation among experiments in the reliability of the information provided by the absence of particular cues in the control treatment may be a general phenomenon, and that Bayesian approaches can be useful in interpreting the results of such experiments.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Yifeng Xu for help with programming, Juliette Tariel for sharing unpublished data, and Barney Luttbeg for insightful comments on a previous draft of the manuscript. This material is partially based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. IOS 1121980 and the National Institutes of Health under award number 2R01GM082937-06A1.

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Affiliations

  1. Evolution and Ecology, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, USA

    Judy A. Stamps

  2. Evolution, Ecology and Behavior, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Il, USA

    Alison M. Bell

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  1. Judy A. Stamps
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  2. Alison M. Bell
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JAS and AMB jointly formulated the ideas, JAS designed and analyzed the models, JAS and AMB jointly wrote the article.

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Correspondence to Judy A. Stamps.

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Communicated by Ola Olsson.

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Stamps, J.A., Bell, A.M. The information provided by the absence of cues: insights from Bayesian models of within and transgenerational plasticity. Oecologia 194, 585–596 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-020-04792-9

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Keywords

  • Developmental plasticity
  • Parental effects
  • Within-generational plasticity
  • WGP
  • Transgenerational plasticity
  • TGP
  • Socially cued plasticity
  • Updating
  • Social cues