The potential effect of larval condition on adult immunity in holometabolous insects is rarely considered. We show here that larval food composition can impact adult immunity independent from effects on general condition of the animal. Rather, our data indicate a plastic allocation of resources to immunity in high-protein environments. Specifically, we found that increasing the nutritional yeas...

1. The gradient in pond canopy cover strongly influences freshwater species distributions. This study tested the effects of canopy cover on the performance of two species of larval anurans, a canopy cover generalist (Rana sylvatica, the wood frog) and an open-canopy specialist (R. pipiens, the leopard frog), and tested which factors co-varying with canopy cover mediate these effects. 2. A field...

For organisms with complex life cycles, larval environments can modify adult phenotypes. For mosquitoes and other vectors, when physiological impacts of stressors acting on larvae carry over into the adult stage they may interact with infectious dose of a vector-borne pathogen, producing a range of phenotypes for vector potential. Investigation of impacts of a common source of stress, larval cr...

Background: Acute high dose exposure to teratogenic chemicals alters the proper development of an embryo leading to infertility, impaired fecundity, and few viable offspring. However, chronic exposure to sub-toxic doses of teratogens during early development may also have long-term impacts on egg quality and embryo viability. Methods: To test the hypothesis that low dose exposure during early d...

Animals use various environmental cues as key determinant for their behavioral decisions. Visual systems are hereby responsible to translate light-dependent stimuli into neuronal encoded information. Even though the larval eyes of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster are comparably simple, they comprise two types of photoreceptor neurons (PRs), defined by different Rhodopsin genes expressed. R...

The replacement of native forests by exotic tree monocultures, such as those of Eucalyptus, decreases the quality of leaf litter inputs to streams and often reduces riparian cover, which can elevate water temperature. The combined effects of these stressors on the survival and performance of detritivores may be important, as detritivore species loss leads to reduced litter breakdown, a key ecos...

Selenium as selenite was added to laboratory cultures of Chironomus riparius. In two sets of cultures, substrate-bound Se concentrations were typically 10(3) times dissolved Se concentrations, while in the other set dissolved Se concentrations were about 10 to 50 times substrate-bound Se concentrations. Body burdens of individual second-, third-, and fourth-instar larvae and eviscerated fourth-...

The health and functioning of coral reef ecosystems worldwide is in decline, and in the face of increasing anthropogenic stress, the rate of decline of these important ecosystems is set to accelerate. Mitigation strategies at regional scales are costly, but nevertheless critical, as reef systems are highly connected across regions by ocean transport of both larval propagules and pollutants. It ...