Meeting Abstract

56-8   09:45 - 10:00  Stressors interact across generations to influence offspring telomeres and survival Young, RC*; Westneat, DF; Heidinger, BJ; North Dakota State University; University of Kentucky; North Dakota State University rebeccacyoung721@gmail.com

Stressors experienced by parents impact their own fitness but can also have effects on offspring fitness. Such effects may interact with stress the offspring themselves experience during development in several ways. Under the silver spoon hypothesis, all stressors remove the offspring environment and developing phenotype from an optimum. Therefore, offspring experiencing cross-generational stress and developmental stress would be doubly disadvantaged. However, under the environmental matching hypothesis, an offspring phenotype influenced by cross-generational stress might be more prepared to face a stressful developmental environment. We explored these interactions in free-living house sparrows (Passer domesticus). There are many mechanisms by which parents could transmit stress effects to their offspring, and we focused on telomere length (TL) as an epigenetic trait affected by stress and growth. We exposed nest-building parents to novel objects and predator models and compared their offspring to those in control nests. Additionally, we split broods into stressed and unstressed nestlings, where stress was induced via daily handling and restraint. The parental stressor treatment produced nestlings with shorter TL at day 2, but not at day 10. Day 2 TL also predicted nestling survival to day 10. The nestling and parental stressor treatments did not interact, however parental exposure to stressors did interact with natural nestling stressors (large brood size and relative size within the brood) in ways that supported a hypothesis of environmental matching. Thus, the effects of stressors experienced by parents and offspring on fitness appear to be context dependent.