Meeting Abstract
Infectious diseases can have both short- and long-term behavioral and physiological effects on hosts, even after the infection has cleared. Thus, diseases experienced before breeding could have lasting impacts on parental reproductive behavior and physiology that ultimately shape the developmental environment of offspring. In this study, we quantified the effects of an infection cleared prior to mating on parental care behaviors of females and characteristics of their eggs (e.g., egg mass, yolk mass, and yolk constituents) important to hatching success and hatchling phenotype. In female canaries previously-infected with the bacterial pathogen Mycoplasma gallisepticum, stronger responses to infection appear to be associated with increased investment in parental care behaviors, suggesting that the severity of symptoms experienced during a recent infection could drive investment in the subsequent breeding attempt. Further, investment in eggs was influenced by Mycoplasma gallisepticum exposure history. This research will increase our understanding of the latent effects of infectious disease on parental reproductive investment and its ability to shape offspring phenotype through shifts in parental traits that establish the developmental environment.
