Kirsten Lindemann, “Maternal Effects in Enchenopa binotata Females”
Mentor: Rafael Rodriguez Sevilla, Biological Sciences
Poster #94

Maternal effects refer to cases where maternal phenotypes influence the expression of offspring phenotypes. Maternal effects can lead to drastic and diverse changes in many traits including physiology and behavior and may even be adaptive. We were interested in whether maternal effects may also influence adult sexual traits in offspring. We therefore tested the hypotheses that: (i) maternal effects are a cause of variation in adult offspring females’ mate preferences; and (ii) such maternal effects are adaptive. We manipulated maternal egg-laying density in Enchenopa treehoppers, for which there is prior evidence of plasticity in mate preferences based on juvenile experiences and juvenile population density. We placed mated Enchenopa females in three treatment egg-laying densities (low, medium, high). Once the eggs hatched, we reared the nymphs to adulthood and assessed variation in females’ mate preferences with a playback experiment. We found that females’ mate preferences varied according to the egg-laying density their mothers experienced, with females being less selective when their mothers had experienced lower densities. We suggest that these results may represent an adaptive maternal effect on adult mate preferences, because it may help females avoid being too selective when their mothers experienced a cue of sparse population densities, and hence be more likely to secure matings.