The effect of developmental nutrition on life span and fecundity depends on the adult reproductive environment in Drosophila melanogaster

Abstract

Summary: Both developmental nutrition and adult nutrition affect life-history traits; however, little is known about whether the effect of developmental nutrition depends on the adult environment experienced. We used the fruit fly to determine whether life-history traits, particularly life span and fecundity, are affected by developmental nutrition, and whether this depends on the extent to which the adult environment allows females to realize their full reproductive potential. We raised flies on three different developmental food levels containing increasing amounts of yeast and sugar: poor, control, and rich. We found that development on poor or rich larval food resulted in several life-history phenotypes indicative of suboptimal conditions, including increased developmental time, and, for poor food, decreased adult weight. However, development on poor larval food actually increased adult virgin life span. In addition, we manipulated the reproductive potential of the adult environment by adding yeast or yeast and a male. This manipulation interacted with larval food to determine adult fecundity. Specifically, under two adult conditions, flies raised on poor larval food had higher reproduction at certain ages - when singly mated this occurred early in life and when continuously mated with yeast this occurred during midlife. We show that poor larval food is not necessarily detrimental to key adult life-history traits, but does exert an adult environment-dependent effect, especially by affecting virgin life span and altering adult patterns of reproductive investment. Our findings are relevant because (1) they may explain differences between published studies on nutritional effects on life-history traits; (2) they indicate that optimal nutritional conditions are likely to be different for larvae and adults, potentially reflecting evolutionary history; and (3) they urge for the incorporation of developmental nutritional conditions into the central life-history concept of resource acquisition and allocation. We show that adult fecundity and lifespan depend on the developmental nutritional environment experienced in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. In particular, we highlight two main findings: first: contrary to expectations, experiencing very calorically poor food during development can lead to a longer lifespan and increased fecundity in the adult fly, while calorically rich developmental food has the opposite effect; and second, the magnitude of the long term effect of developmental nutrition depends on the reproductive potential of the adult environment experienced. These findings are important for both the study of the interplay between life history traits and evolution, but also for understanding long term developmental effects on adult health.