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The Role of Sex-specific Plasticity in Shaping Sexual Dimorphism in a Long-lived Vertebrate, the Snapping Turtle Chelydra serpentina

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Abstract

Sex-specific plasticity, the differential response that the genome of males and females may have to different environments, is a mechanism that can affect the degree of sexual dimorphism. Two adaptive hypotheses have been proposed to explain how sex-specific plasticity affects the evolution of sexual size dimorphism. The adaptive canalization hypothesis states that the larger sex exhibits lesser plasticity compared to the smaller sex due to strong directional selection for a large body size, which penalizes individuals attaining sub-optimal body sizes. The condition-dependence hypothesis states that the larger sex exhibits greater plasticity than the smaller sex due to strong directional selection for a large body size favoring a greater sensitivity as an opportunistic mechanism for growth enhancement under favorable conditions. While the relationship between sex-specific plasticity and sexual dimorphism has been studied mainly in invertebrates, its role in long-lived vertebrates has received little attention. In this study we tested the predictions derived from these two hypotheses by comparing the plastic responses of body size and shape of males and females of the snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina) raised under common garden conditions. Body size was plastic, sexually dimorphic, and the plasticity was also sex-specific, with males exhibiting greater body size plasticity relative to females. Because snapping turtle males are larger than females, sexual size dimorphism in this species appears to be driven by an increased plasticity of the larger sex over the smaller sex as predicted by the condition-dependent hypothesis. However, male body size was enhanced under relatively limited resources, in contrast to expectations from this model. Body shape was also plastic and sexually dimorphic, however no sex by environment interaction was found in this case. Instead, plasticity of sexual shape dimorphism seems to evolve in parallel for males and females as both sexes responded similarly to different environments.

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Acknowledgments

We thank J. Millard for donating the eggs for this study, R. Clayton for assistance with housing and maintenance of the animals, C. Vleck for assistance with RIA assays, D. Adams for advice on data analyses, and several undergraduate students for daily maintenance of the animals and help with data collection. Funding was provided from grants: P.E.O. International Peace Scholarship to CC, NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant DEB-0808047 to NV and CC, NSF IOS 0743284 and associated REU and RET supplements to NV, and several assistantships to CC from Iowa State University. This research was approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of Iowa State University.

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  1. Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology, Iowa State University, 253 Bessey Hall, Ames, IA, 50011, USA

    Claudia Patricia Ceballos & Nicole Valenzuela

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  1. Claudia Patricia Ceballos
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Correspondence to Nicole Valenzuela.

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Appendix

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Table 6 Ingredients and nutritional composition of the two types of turtle food (Zoo Med Lab) with relatively higher and lower quality used in this study (source: http://www.zoomed.com downloaded on September 15, 2010)
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Ceballos, C.P., Valenzuela, N. The Role of Sex-specific Plasticity in Shaping Sexual Dimorphism in a Long-lived Vertebrate, the Snapping Turtle Chelydra serpentina . Evol Biol 38, 163–181 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11692-011-9117-8

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