Effects of parental larval diet on egg size and offspring traits in Drosophila

Abstract

If a mother's nutritional status predicts the nutritional environment of the offspring, it would be adaptive for mothers experiencing nutritional stress to prime their offspring for a better tolerance to poor nutrition. We report that in Drosophila melanogaster, parents raised on poor larval food laid 3-6% heavier eggs than parents raised on standard food, despite being 30 per cent smaller. Their offspring developed 14 h (4%) faster on the poor food than offspring of well-fed parents. However, they were slightly smaller as adults. Thus, the effects of parental diet on offspring performance under malnutrition apparently involve both adaptive plasticity and maladaptive effects of parental stress.

Figure 1.

Egg weight (mean ± s.e.) as a function of maternal larval diet. Parental diet: grey bar, standard and black bar, poor.

Figure 2.

Offspring traits (means ± s.e.) as a function of parental and offspring diets: (a) time from oviposition to pupation, (b) the duration of the pupal stage, (c) egg-to-adult viability and (d) female dry weight. Unfilled bar, standard parental and standard offspring diet; light grey bar, poor parental and standard offspring diet; dark grey bar, standard parental and poor offspring diet and black bar, poor parental and poor offspring diet.