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Temperature-induced shifts in selective pressure at a critical developmental transition

  • Population Ecology
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Abstract

Selective mortality within a population, based on the phenotype of individuals, is the foundation of the theory of natural selection. We examined temperature-induced shifts in the relationships among early life history traits and survivorship over the embryonic and larval stages of a tropical damselfish, Pomacentrus amboinensis. Our experiments show that temperature determines the intensity of selective mortality, and that this changes with ontogeny. The size of energy stores determined survival through to hatching, after which egg size became a good indicator of fitness as predicted by theoretical models. Yet, the benefits associated with egg size were not uniform among test temperatures. Initial egg size positively influenced larval survival at control temperature (29 °C). However, this embryonic trait had no effect on post-hatching longevity of individuals reared at the higher (31 °C) and lower (25 °C) end of the temperature range. Overall, our findings indicate that the outcome of selective mortality is strongly dependent on the interaction between environment conditions and intrinsic developmental schedules.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Vanessa Messmer and the staff at Lizard Island Research Station for assistance with the experiment, and Chris Chambers, Martial Depczynski, Charles Fox, Bridget Green and two anonymous reviewers for valuable comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. Financial support was provided by a Ph.D. fellowship from the AFUW-Qld (M.G.) and research funding from an Australian Research Council Discovery grant (M.I.M., M.G.M). This study was conducted under appropriate permits from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and the JCU Animal Ethics Committee (Approval Number A836_03).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, School of Marine and Tropical Biology, James Cook University, Townsville, QLD, 4811, Australia

    Monica Gagliano & Mark I. McCormick

  2. Australian Institute of Marine Science, Building 42, Northern Territory University, Darwin, NT, 0909, Australia

    Mark G. Meekan

Authors
  1. Monica Gagliano
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  2. Mark I. McCormick
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  3. Mark G. Meekan
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Correspondence to Monica Gagliano.

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Communicated by Martin Attrill.

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Gagliano, M., McCormick, M.I. & Meekan, M.G. Temperature-induced shifts in selective pressure at a critical developmental transition. Oecologia 152, 219–225 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-006-0647-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-006-0647-1

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