Meeting Abstract
Evolutionary history, parental experience, and personal experience provide distinct avenues by which organisms adjust phenotypes based on environment, yet the mechanisms mediating phenotypic variation on these time scales may interact. Here we examine how population history, parental environment and juvenile experience interact to modify offspring phenotypes in the Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata). Parents from across four populations (two high-predation and two low-predation) were raised in the lab either with or without predator cues, and offspring were split and raised either with or without predator cues. We found that parental effects impacted both offspring size and multiple behaviors. For most phenotypes, male and female offspring differed in consequences of parental and personal experience. Indeed, sex was a stronger predictor of the interaction between parental and personal experience than population history. Altogether, our results suggest that parental effects and offspring experience are weighted differently in males and females, and highlight the complex interactions between transgenerational and developmental plasticity during development.
