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Elevated temperature changes female costs and benefits of reproduction

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Abstract

Despite obvious benefits, reproduction also imposes severe costs on females. Such costs and benefits are highly sensitive to environmental factors. Rapidly changing conditions may thus disturb a finely poised balance between the two and pose a challenge to natural populations. A more complete understanding of reproduction and population fitness across different environments is, hence, crucial. In particular, sexual selection could either be beneficial or detrimental when conditions change abruptly. Here Tribolium castaneum females were subjected to mating treatments with or without sexual selection (virginity, monogamy, polyandry) replicated at standard versus elevated temperatures. We found a substantial survival cost of reproduction at the standard, but not at the elevated temperature. Reproductive success was similar across mating treatments at the standard temperature, but at elevated temperature we detected a significant benefit of polyandry compared to monogamy. These findings indicate that environmental heterogeneity can strongly influence the balance between costs and benefits when sexual selection is allowed to act. Furthermore, reproduction may be critically affected by changes in temperature with potentially profound consequences for population fitness.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the SNF for support (standard research grant 31003A_125144/1, Ambizione grant PZ00P3_121777/1 to OYM), Sonja Sbilordo for help with the experiment and Marco Demont for statistical advice. We further thank Camillo Berenos, Luc Bussière, Niels Kerstes & Sara Goodacre for helpful comments and interesting discussions and Prof. Schmid-Hempel’s group for providing a stimulating research and social environment.

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  1. ETH Zurich, Experimental Ecology, Institute for Integrative Biology, Universitätsstrasse 16, 8092, Zürich, Switzerland

    Vera M. Grazer & Oliver Y. Martin

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  1. Vera M. Grazer
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  2. Oliver Y. Martin
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Correspondence to Oliver Y. Martin.

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Grazer, V.M., Martin, O.Y. Elevated temperature changes female costs and benefits of reproduction. Evol Ecol 26, 625–637 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-011-9508-4

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