compensatory development and costs of plasticity larval responses to desiccated conspecifics补偿塑性发展和成本幼虫反应干燥同种个体.pdfVIP

Compensatory Development and Costs of Plasticity: Larval Responses to Desiccated Conspecifics 1 2 3,4 1 Asaf Sadeh *, Noa Truskanov , Marc Mangel , Leon Blaustein 1 Department of Evolutionary and Environmental Biology and the Institute of Evolution, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel, 2 Department of Biology, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel, 3 Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, Jack Baskin School of Engineering, University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, California, United States of America, 4 Department of Biology, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway Abstract Understanding constraints on phenotypic plasticity is central to explaining its evolution and the evolution of phenotypes in general, yet there is an ongoing debate on the classification and relationships among types of constraints. Since plasticity is often a developmental process, studies that consider the ontogeny of traits and their developmental mechanisms are beneficial. We manipulated the timing and reliability of cues perceived by fire salamander larvae for the future desiccation of their ephemeral pools to determine whether flexibility in developmental rates is constrained to early ontogeny. We hypothesized that higher rates of development, and particularly compensation for contradictory cues, would incur greater endogenous costs. We found that larvae respond early in ontogeny to dried conspecifics as a cue for future desiccation, but can fully compensate for this response in case more reliable but contradictory cues are later perceived. Patterns of mortality suggested that endogenous costs may depend on instantaneous rates of development, and revealed asymmetrical costs of compensatory devel