Transgenerational plasticity and environmental stress: do paternal effects act as a conduit or a buffer?

摘要: Summary For most organisms, early life-history stages are the sensitive to environmental stress and so transgenerational phenotypic plasticity, whereby parental environment offspring interact alter phenotype of offspring, is viewed as key promoting persistence in face change. While there has been long-standing interest role plasticity via maternal line (traditionally field effects), increasingly it appears that paternal effects can also play a role. Despite emerging studies global change, knowledge gaps remain: first, whether act increase or decrease performance remains largely unexplored; second, relative roles rarely disentangled; third, variation, determinant benefits not explored with regard effects. Here, we explore all three issues using marine tubeworm Galeolaria caespitosa, an important habitat-forming species southern Australia. We found both experiences affected (fertilization larval development) and, surprisingly, were often stronger than effects. Furthermore, reduced performance, especially when environments varied compared stable. Our results suggest that, while may modifying impacts these uniformly positive. Importantly, be strong, stronger, variability strongly alters