Meeting Abstract
Animals vary in a range of important traits related to fitness, such as growth, reproduction, and self-maintenance. These individual traits may be developmentally plastic and, thus, irreversibly determined by the environment in which an animal develops. Yet, the developmental plasticity of relationships among traits is less understood. Therefore, we manipulated nutrient density throughout development and measured investment into growth (adult body size and mass, and developmental rate), reproduction (gonad mass and head width [a proxy for intra-sexual combat success in males]), and self-maintenance (activity of phenoloxidase [PO], an important immune enzyme) in two morphs of sand field crickets (Gryllus firmus) constrained by a flight-fecundity tradeoff. We reared crickets on either a low-density diet (10% cat food and 90% bran) or a high-density diet (90% cat food and 10% bran) throughout development. At adulthood, we measured aspects of morphology, sampled hemolymph for subsequent PO assays, and stored animals at -20ºC prior to removing and weighing gonads. In addition to traditional methods of analysis (e.g., multivariate analysis of variance, MANOVA), we used quantitative network topology metrics to examine and describe the relationships among the independent and interactive effects of sex, wing morphology, and developmental environment on growth, reproduction, and self-maintenance. A high-density diet and long-wing morphology prolonged development, and females were larger, heavier, and in better body condition while males had wider heads (MANOVA). We will present further results on investment into reproduction and self-maintenance, and on network metrics that quantify the developmental plasticity of multi-trait interactions.
