Abstract
Environmental variation favors the evolution of phenotypic plasticity. For many species, we understand the costs and benefits of different phenotypes, but we lack a broad understanding of how plastic traits evolve across large clades. Using identical experiments conducted across North America, we examined prey responses to predator cues. We quantified five life-history traits and the magnitude of their plasticity for 23 amphibian species/populations (spanning three families and five genera) when exposed to no cues, crushed-egg cues, and predatory crayfish cues. Embryonic responses varied considerably among species and phylogenetic signal was common among the traits, whereas phylogenetic signal was rare for trait plasticities. Among trait-evolution models, the Ornstein–Uhlenbeck (OU) model provided the best fit or was essentially tied with Brownian motion. Using the best fitting model, evolutionary rates for plasticities were higher than traits for three life-history traits and lower for two. These data suggest that the evolution of life-history traits in amphibian embryos is more constrained by a species’ position in the phylogeny than is the evolution of life history plasticities. The fact that an OU model of trait evolution was often a good fit to patterns of trait variation may indicate adaptive optima for traits and their plasticities.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 663-678 |
Number of pages | 16 |
Journal | Evolution |
Volume | 72 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Mar 2018 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2018 The Author(s). Evolution © 2018 The Society for the Study of Evolution.
Funding
This project was funded by a National Science Foundation grant (DEB 07–16149) to RAR and PRS. During the data analysis, JIH was supported by National Institute of General Medical Sciences Grant K12GM088021. Content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of either the NIH or NSF. We were also assisted by a large number of undergraduate students spanning all of the laboratories. The authors declare no conflicts of interest. We also thanks the Associate Editor and three excellent reviewers for their help in making this a stronger, clearer, and more compelling publication.
Funders | Funder number |
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U.S. Department of Energy Chinese Academy of Sciences Guangzhou Municipal Science and Technology Project Oak Ridge National Laboratory Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment National Science Foundation National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center National Natural Science Foundation of China | DEB 07–16149 |
U.S. Department of Energy Chinese Academy of Sciences Guangzhou Municipal Science and Technology Project Oak Ridge National Laboratory Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment National Science Foundation National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center National Natural Science Foundation of China | |
National Institute of General Medical Sciences | K12GM088021 |
National Institute of General Medical Sciences |
Keywords
- Anaxyrus
- Hyla
- Lithobates
- Pseudacris
- Rana
- phylogenetic inertia
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
- Genetics
- General Agricultural and Biological Sciences