Many organisms inhabiting seasonal environments exhibit adaptive developmental plasticity, allowing them to optimally match life-history traits with fluctuating conditions. This critically relies on environmental cues, such as temperature, as predictors for seasonal transitions. In most seasonal environments, multiple factors vary together, but might not be equally relevant as cue, making it crucial to understand their combined effects on an organism’s phenotype. Here, we study plasticity in a multivariate environment in the seasonally polyphenic butterfly Bicyclus anynana . Using a full-factorial design, we test how developmental temperature and host plant quality interact to affect life-history traits. Our results show that the cues interact: reduced food quality can act as a predictive cue at temperatures normally associated with the food-rich wet season, inducing a partial dry season phenotype. At low temperatures, normally associated with the food-poor dry season, reduced food quality had an adverse effect on life history, with decreased body mass and prolonged development time. However, metabolic rates in adults were not affected, indicating that individuals could partly compensate for stressful juvenile conditions. Thus, under certain environmental conditions, a single cue (e.g. temperature) might suffice to shape an organisms’ phenotype, while under other conditions additional cues (like plant quality) might be needed in shaping the organism’s phenotype to optimally match seasonal conditions. Our study reveals complex interactive effects of two environmental variables on seasonal plasticity, highlighting the importance of studying multivariate environmental factors to better understand the regulation of phenotypic plasticity in the wild.

中文翻译：

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季节性蝴蝶对多元环境线索的复杂多特征反应

许多居住在季节性环境中的生物都表现出适应性发育可塑性，使它们能够将生活史特征与波动的条件进行最佳匹配。这严重依赖于环境线索，例如温度，作为季节性转变的预测指标。在大多数季节性环境中，多种因素共同变化，但可能与线索的相关性不同，因此了解它们对生物体表型的综合影响至关重要。在这里，我们研究了季节性多芬蝴蝶 Bicyclus anynana 在多元环境中的可塑性。使用全因子设计，我们测试发育温度和寄主植物质量如何相互作用以影响生活史特征。我们的结果表明线索相互作用：在通常与食物丰富的雨季相关的温度下，食品质量下降可以作为预测线索，导致部分旱季表型。在低温下，通常与食物匮乏的旱季有关，食物质量下降会对生活史产生不利影响，导致体重下降和发育时间延长。然而，成年人的代谢率没有受到影响，这表明个体可以部分补偿青少年的压力。因此，在某些环境条件下，单个线索（例如温度）可能足以塑造生物体的表型，而在其他条件下，可能需要额外的线索（如植物质量）来塑造生物体的表型以最佳地匹配季节性条件。