Meeting Abstract

107.3  Tuesday, Jan. 7 08:30  Maternal diet, developmental plasticity, and reproductive fitness in the house mouse HOOD, W.R.; Auburn University wrhood@auburn.edu

The early environment of an individual can alter processes responsible for long-term or permanent changes in phenotype. There is good evidence that individual differences in glucose, lipid, and bone metabolism, to name a few, are partially attributable to the supply of nutrients made available to the young as they develop. It has been argued that developmental plasticity matches offspring physiology to maternal diet and that this process is adaptive. Adult offspring that live in an environment comparable to their mother are expected to have greater fitness than those that live in a different environment. Despite the ubiquity of this hypothesis, there is little empirical evidence to support it. The goals of this work are to 1 – confirm that an individual’s physiological phenotype is programmed during early development under natural conditions, and 2 – determine if adult offspring consuming diets comparable to their parents have greater fitness than those that have a mismatched diet. This work was conducted in 10 wild-derived populations of house mice (Mus musculus) maintained at a population density and conditions that mimic demes of mice living in barns. The parental generation was maintained on 10% or 20% protein diet. After weaning, F1 offspring were kept on the same diet as their parents or switch to the alternate diet. Treatment impacted male and female mice differently with male offspring on the matched treatment depositing more abdominal fat than those on the mismatched diet and females on the matched diet displaying less abdominal fat than those on a mismatched diet. The impact of treatment on male and female survival, male dominance, and female reproductive output will be discussed.