Environmental conditions (diet, population density, disease, etc.) experienced by parents or even grandparents are recognized to affect offspring performance (i.e. transgenerational effect) (1).
Several years ago, it was assumed that maternal effects are more important for offspring performance than paternal effects because mothers invest more resources in reproduction and care of offsprings. However, recent studies reported that conditions of mothers and fathers are increasingly important for offsprings but with their effects on different offspring traits (2, 3, 4). For example, in the neriid fly, Telostylinus angusticollis, high diet mothers produced larger eggs and their offspring developed more rapidly when on a poor diet. However, maternal condition had no effect on adult body size of offspring. In contrast, large-high condition fathers produced larger offsprings (2). Similarly, in the herbivorous butterfly (Voenonympha pamphilus), parents experiencing predictive cues on their host plant can adjust their progeny’s phenotype to anticipated host plant quality. Although maternal conditions affected both male and female offsprings, paternal conditions affected only male offsprings (3). Moreover, in Drosophila melanogaster, mothers that were raised on poor food produced larger offspring than mothers that were raised on standard food. Male offspring sired by fathers that were raised on poor food were larger than male offspring sired by father raised on standard food (4).
The paternal social environment is an important cue for offspring fitness-related traits (5, 6). In the neriid fly, fathers reared on rich diet and maintained in mixed-sex groups produced larger male offspring but reduced offspring viability. Conversely, fathers reared on rich diet but maintained in same-sex groups produced more viable offsprings but reduced offspring body size (5). Likewise, in the broadcast spawners, Styela plicata, offspring from low-density fathers survived better than offspring from high-density fathers in low density-environments, but offspring from high-density fathers survived better than offspring from low-density fathers in high-density environments. In other words, offsprings do best in an environment similar to that experienced by father (6). These findings suggest that adaptive non-genetic paternal effects may be more common in males than previously thought.
It is becoming apparent that environmental factors including antibiotics can induce epigenetic changes that are transmitted to offspring through male germ line. In the pseudoscorpion, Cordylochernes scorpioides, tetracycline-treated males significantly reduced sperm viability, and transmitted this toxic effect to on sperm of their untreated sons but not their grandsons (7).
Like maternal effects, environmentally-induced paternal effects may become as an important driver of ecological and evolutionary changes in the future.
References
1. Bonduriansky, R. & Day, T. 2009. Nongenetic inheritance and its evolutionary implications. Annu. Rev. Ecol. Evol. Syst. 40: 103-125.
2. Bonduriansky, R. & Head, M. 2007 .Maternal and paternal condition effects on offspring phenotype in Telostylinus angusticollis (Diptera: Neriidae). J. Evol. Biol. 20: 2379-2388.
3. Cahenzli, F. & Erhardt, A. 2013. Transgenerational acclimatization in an herbivore-host plant relationship. Proc.R.Soc.B 280: 20122856.
4. Valtonen, T. M., Kangassalo, K., PÖlkki, M. & Rantala, M. J. 2012. Transgenerational effects of parental larval diet on offspring development time, adult body size and pathogen resistance in Drosophila melanogaster. PLoS. ONE. 7(2): e31611.
5. Adler, M. I. & Bonduriansky, R. 2013. Paternal effects on offspring fitness reflect father’s social environment. Evol. Biol. 40: 288-292.
6. Crean, A. J., Dwyer, J. M. & Marshall, D. J. 2013. Adaptive paternal effects? Experimental evidence that the paternal environment effects offspring performance. Bull. Ecol. Soc. Am. http://dx.doi.org/10.1890/13-0184.1
7. Zeh, J. A., Bonilla, M. M., Adrian, A. J., Mesfin, S. & Zeh, D. W. 2012. From father to son: transgenerational effect of tetracycline on sperm viability. Sci. Rep. 2: 375.