Do Maternal Food Deprivation and Offspring Predator Cues Interactively Affect Maternal Effort in Fish?

Influences from the parental environment can be transmitted to offspring via parental effects and may profoundly affect the phenotype expressed in subsequent generations, for example, germination season in plants (e.g. Galloway 2001), offspring size (e.g. Naguib & Gil 2005; Taborsky 2006), natal dispersal (e.g. Tschirren et al. 2007) and egg quality (Blount et al. 2002) in several bird and fish species. One highly influential mechanism by which parents can affect the phenotype of their offspring is by the quality of brood care. Thus, when the environmental conditions present during rearing affect brood care behaviour, they can have a transgenerational effect on offspring phenotype and fitness (e.g. Wapstra 2000; Kolbe & Janzen 2001; Jodice et al. 2006; Evans et al. 2007; Reardon & Chapman 2010). Correspondence Francisca Segers, Behavioural Ecology, Institute of Ecology and Evolution, University of Bern, Wohlenstrasse 50a, CH-3032 Hinterkappelen, Switzerland E-mail: [email protected]