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McConnell, N., Haerty, W. 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0111-191X, Gage, M. J. G. and Chapman, T.
(2024)
Socially plastic responses in females are robust to evolutionary manipulations of adult sex ratio and adult nutrition.
Journal of Evolutionary Biology.
ISSN 1010-061X
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Abstract
Socially plastic behaviours are widespread among animals and can have a significant impact on fitness. Here we investigated whether the socially plastic responses of female Drosophila melanogaster can evolve in predictable ways following long term manipulation of adult sex ratio and adult nutrient availability. Previous reports show that female D. melanogaster respond plastically to their same-sex social environment, and lay significantly fewer eggs after mating when previously exposed to other females. In this study, we tested two hypotheses, using females drawn from lines with an evolutionary history of exposure to variation in adult sex ratio (male biased, female biased or equal sex ratio) and adult nutritional environment (high or low quality). The first was that a history of elevated competition in female-biased regimes would select for increased plastic fecundity responses in comparison to females from other lines. The second was that these responses would also be magnified under poor nutritional resource regimes. Neither hypothesis was supported. Instead, we found that plastic fecundity responses were retained in females from all lines, and did not differ significantly across any of them. The lack of differences does not appear to be due to insufficient selection, as we did observe significant evolutionary responses in virgin egg laying patterns according to sex ratio and nutritional regime. The lack of variation in the magnitude of predicted plasticity is consistent with the idea that the costs of maintaining plasticity are low, benefits high, and that plasticity itself can be relatively hard wired.
| Item Type: | Article |
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| Additional Information: | Data availability statement: Supplementary figures and tables are presented in the Supplementary Information (including statistical analysis code). Raw data are available at https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.qbzkh18s6. Funding information: This work was supported by the UKRI Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council Norwich Research Park Biosciences Doctoral Training Partnership [Grant number BB/M011216/1] and NERC (NE/T007133/1; NE/R010056/1; NE/R000891/1). WH is supported by the BBSRC Core Strategic Program Grant BB/CSP1720/1 and its constituent work packages (BBS/E/T/000PR9818 and BBS/E/T/000PR9819), |
| Faculty \ School: | Faculty of Science Faculty of Science > School of Biological Sciences |
| UEA Research Groups: | Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Centres > Norwich Institute for Healthy Aging Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Organisms and the Environment |
| Related URLs: | |
| Depositing User: | LivePure Connector |
| Date Deposited: | 19 Sep 2024 16:30 |
| Last Modified: | 25 Sep 2024 18:10 |
| URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/96784 |
| DOI: | 10.1093/jeb/voae102 |
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