Combining information from parental and personal experiences: Simple processes generate diverse outcomes.

Area of Science:

• Evolutionary biology
• Behavioral ecology
• Developmental plasticity

Background:

• Parental and offspring experiences are assumed to influence offspring trait development by providing environmental information.
• The joint effects of parental and offspring experiences on offspring phenotypes, particularly in developmental plasticity, remain unclear.
• Understanding information states is crucial for interpreting empirical studies on plasticity in response to environmental cues.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze Bayesian models of trans and within-generational plasticity (TWP).
• To investigate how parental and offspring cue exposure durations, information devaluation, and degradation impact offspring environmental state estimates.
• To determine the influence of parental priors and cue reliability on these effects.

Main Methods:

• Bayesian modeling approach.
• Mimicking fully-factorial experimental designs for TWP.
• Analyzing variations in cue exposure duration, information devaluation, and degradation.

Main Results:

• Offspring estimates of environmental risk are influenced by interactions between cue exposure parameters and parental priors.
• Information devaluation and degradation from parents significantly alter offspring environmental state estimations.
• The relative reliability of cues across different treatments modulates the impact of parental and offspring experiences.

Conclusions:

• Observed variations in TWP experimental results can be explained by information-updating principles.
• No additional assumptions regarding costs, tradeoffs, or fitness consequences are needed to explain these patterns.
• The study provides a framework for interpreting empirical findings on developmental plasticity based on information processing.