How does parental environment influence the potential for adaptation to global change?

Area of Science:

• Evolutionary biology
• Marine biology
• Genetics

Background:

• Parental environments influence offspring fitness but their effect on genetic variation for fitness, crucial for adaptive capacity, remains unclear.
• Understanding how parental environments mediate adaptation to stressors like global change is vital.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how parental exposure to projected ocean warming affects offspring survival and genetic variation for survival in marine tubeworms.
• To determine if parental warming exposure alters adaptive capacity to current and future temperatures.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a quantitative-genetic breeding design with a marine tubeworm species.
• Exposed parents to projected ocean warming conditions.
• Assessed offspring survival under current and projected temperatures.

Main Results:

• Offspring survival was highest when parent and offspring temperatures matched.
• Parental warming exposure altered additive genetic variance for survival, promoting covariance across temperatures.
• Nonadditive genetic variance for survival was amplified by parental warming exposure.

Conclusions:

• Parental environments significantly impact offspring adaptive capacity beyond mean fitness.
• Parental exposure to warming can reshape genetic variation, potentially facilitating evolutionary adaptation to climate change.
• Genomic compatibilities may become more critical for adaptation under future warming scenarios.