Maternal effects influence temperature-dependent offspring survival in Drosophila melanogaster

Abstract Mothers may modulate the phenotype of their offspring by affecting their development based on her own environment. In changing environments, these maternal effects are thought to adjust offspring physiology and development and thus produce offspring better prepared to the environment experienced by the mother. However, evidence for this is scarce. Here we test the consequences of a match or mismatch between mother and offspring temperature conditions on growth, adult morphology and reproduction into the grandchildren generation in the fruit fl y Drosophila melanogaster . This experimental design tests the relative contribution of maternal effects and offspring intrinsic plasticity to the phenotypic response to temperature conditions. We manipulated maternal temperature conditions by exposing mothers to either 18°C or 29°C conditions. Their eggs developed at a temperature that was either matched or mismatched with the maternal one. Survival from egg to adult was higher when the maternal and offspring environments matched, showing maternal effects affecting a trait that is a close proxy for fitness. However developmental speed, adult size and fecundity responded to temperature mostly through offspring phenotypic plasticity and maternal effects only had a small contribution. The results provide experimental evidence for maternal effects in influencing a potentially adaptive offspring response to temperature in the model organism Drosophila melanogaster. These effects appear to modulate early embryonic phenotypes such as survival, more than the adult phenotypes of the offspring.