Nutritional stress during the earliest stages of an animal's life can have long-term effects on its behavior and reproductive performance, but the effects of brief periods of nutritional stress later in life are less well-studied. We manipulated female diet in Narnia femorata (Hemiptera: Coreidae) and investigated to what extent nutritional stress during sexual maturation affects subsequent sexual behavior and long-term offspring production. We show that nutritional stress at this key point during early adulthood can have lasting effects on reproduction, impairing long-term offspring production despite the subsequent return of good nutrition. These results demonstrate that nutritional availability during late stages of development, in young adults, can be crucial to future fitness. We found no effect of temporary nutritional stress on female receptivity to mating or attractiveness to males; although females that were less receptive also produced fewer offspring in the next month. Overall, we demonstrate that even brief periods of nutritional deprivation late in development can have drastic long-term effects, apparently beyond compensation, and despite a good early nutritional environment.

中文翻译：

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长期生殖成功由性行为预测，并因性成熟期间的暂时营养压力而受损

动物生命早期阶段的营养压力可能对其行为和繁殖性能产生长期影响，但对生命后期短暂营养压力的影响研究较少。我们在 Narnia femorata (Hemiptera: Coreidae) 中操纵了雌性饮食，并调查了性成熟过程中的营养压力在多大程度上影响了随后的性行为和长期后代的生产。我们表明，成年早期这一关键点的营养压力会对生殖产生持久影响，尽管随后恢复了良好的营养，但仍会损害后代的长期生产。这些结果表明，年轻人在发育后期的营养供应对未来的健康至关重要。我们发现暂时的营养压力对雌性对交配的接受度或对雄性的吸引力没有影响；尽管接受度较低的雌性在接下来的一个月中也会产生较少的后代。总的来说，我们证明，即使在发育后期短暂的营养缺乏也会产生巨大的长期影响，显然超出补偿，尽管早期营养环境良好。