Meeting Abstract

S3.8  Monday, Jan. 4  Developmental Variation, Carryover Effects, and the Importance of Scale and Context JACOBS, Molly W.*; PODOLSKY, Robert D.; Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; Grice Marine Laboratory, College of Charleston mjacobs@whoi.edu

The life cycles of most metazoan organisms are complex, involving larval stages that are morphologically and ecologically distinct from adult stages. These discrete stages are often subject to very different selection pressures, and yet are inescapably connected through the life cycle of the organism: environmental experiences that affect the fitness of one life history stage may carry over and affect fitness in a subsequent stage. Similarly, inherited variation in morphology, behavior, development rate, or other traits may also carry over from one stage to the next. In recent years a number of researchers have presented convincing evidence of these types of effects, but the adaptive significance of carryover effects is in most cases unclear. Here, we argue that the importance of carryover effects is largely dependent on both the scale of the relevant processes and the environmental context in which they occur. The real importance of developmental variation, whether genetic or introduced by variation in environmental experience, may lie in the flexibility it gives organisms and populations to respond to environmental variation over annual or longer timescales. We will review published examples of carryover effects in this context and also present examples from our own work with gastropods, ascidians, and decapod crustaceans.