Abstract

The environment that parents experience can influence their reproductive output and their offspring’s fitness via parental effects. Perceived predation risk can affect both parent and offspring phenotype, but it remains unclear to what extent offspring behavioral traits are affected when the mother is exposed to predation risk. This is particularly unclear in live-bearing species where maternal effects could occur during embryogenesis. Here, using a half-sib design to control for paternal effects, we experimentally exposed females of a live-bearing fish, the guppy (Poecilia reticulata), to visual predator cues and conspecific alarm cues during their gestation. Females exposed to predation risk cues increased their antipredator behaviors throughout the entire treatment. Offspring of mothers exposed to the predation stimuli exhibited more pronounced exploratory behavior, but did not show any significant differences in their schooling behavior, compared to controls. Thus, while maternally perceived risk affected offspring’s exploration during early stages of life, offspring’s schooling behavior could be influenced more by direct environmental experience rather than via maternal cues. Our results suggest a rather limited role in predator-induced maternal effects on the behavior of juvenile guppies.

中文翻译：

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产妇被捕食的风险会增加后代的探索能力，但不会影响上学行为

摘要

父母所经历的环境会通过父母的影响而影响其生殖能力和后代的健康。感知到的捕食风险会影响父母和后代的表型，但尚不清楚当母亲面临捕食风险时，后代行为特征在多大程度上受到影响。这在有生命的物种中尤其不清楚，在这种物种中，胚胎发生期间可能发生母体效应。在这里，我们使用半同胞设计来控制父本效应，我们通过实验暴露了活鱼鱼（孔雀鱼（Poecilia reticulata）的雌性），妊娠期的视觉掠食者线索和特定警报线索。在整个治疗过程中，遭受捕食风险提示的雌性会增加其抗捕食者的行为。与对照组相比，受到掠食性刺激的母亲的后代表现出更明显的探索行为，但在学习行为上没有任何显着差异。因此，虽然母亲感知的风险在生命的早期阶段影响了后代的探索，但后代的上学行为可能更多地受到直接环境经验的影响，而不是受母亲暗示的影响。我们的研究结果表明，在捕食者诱导的母亲对幼小孔雀鱼行为的影响中，作用相当有限。