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Effects of parental and own early developmental conditions on the phenotype in zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata)

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Abstract

The performance of an individual can be critically influenced by its experience early in life as well as trans-generationally by the conditions experienced by its parents. However, it remains unclear whether or not the early experience of parents and offspring interact with each other and adapt offspring when the parental and own early environmental conditions match. Here, zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) that had experienced either early low or high nutritional conditions raised their offspring under either matched or mismatched nutritional conditions. Parental and offspring early conditions both separately affected the offspring’s adult phenotype, but early conditions experienced by parents and offspring did not interact as predicted. Offspring that grew up under conditions matching those their parents had experienced did not do better than those that grew up in a mismatched environment. Thus, transgenerational effects remain a lifelong burden to the offspring acting in addition to the offspring’s own early life experience. The lack of evidence for adaptive programming to matching environmental conditions may result from non-predictive environments under natural conditions in such opportunistic breeders.

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Acknowledgments

We thank two anonymous reviewers for providing helpful comments on the manuscript. ETK was funded by a graduate scholarship of the Evangelisches Studienwerk Villigst and a research grant of the Ethologische Gesellschaft. MN was granted by the German Research Foundation (Na335/6). We thank Joe Hoffman, Anke Rehling and Barbara Caspers for comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Animal Behaviour, University of Bielefeld, PO Box 100131, 33501, Bielefeld, Germany

    E. Tobias Krause

  2. Behavioural Ecology Group, Department of Animal Sciences, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Marc Naguib

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  1. E. Tobias Krause
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  2. Marc Naguib
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Correspondence to E. Tobias Krause.

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Krause, E.T., Naguib, M. Effects of parental and own early developmental conditions on the phenotype in zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata). Evol Ecol 28, 263–275 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-013-9674-7

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