Meeting Abstract

 

P3-75  Sunday, Jan. 6 15:30 – 17:30  The effect of dynamic diets on female reproductive traits CIRINO, LA*; MOORE, PJ; MILLER, CW; University of Florida; University of Georgia; University of Florida lacirino@ufl.edu http://www.millerlab.net

It is well known that poor early life nutrition has strong negative effects on reproduction. Adult nutrition can also affect reproductive output. Those few studies that have teased apart the effects of nutrition at different life stages on female reproductive output have done so through the use of artificial diets. Because of these artificial diets, it is less clear if animals can overcome poor early life nutrition as they take advantage of higher quality seasonal resources that become available later in life in the wild. To understand how separate and combined natural juvenile and adult nutrition affects female life history traits, we asked: What are the impacts of natural diets on female reproductive traits in leaf-footed cactus bugs? Juveniles were placed on two different cactus pad treatments: ripe fruited cactus pads (optimal) and unripe fruited cactus pads (suboptimal). Upon adulthood, a subset of the suboptimal diet females were placed on optimal diets. Preliminary analyses suggest that suboptimal juvenile nutrition does affect female receptivity with females more likely to mate at a younger adult age even though ovary mass and egg production does not differ between treatments. However, after females age for two weeks on their respective diets, female receptivity increases for all diet treatments and does not differ between them. Further, both optimal diet females and those females switched on to optimal diets in their adulthood appear to have less egg production and ovary mass than the suboptimal diet treatment. These results may represent a life history tradeoff where females allocate their limited resources to reproduction in early adult life due to their poor nutritional environment.