For most organisms, early life-history stages are the most sensitive to environmental stress and so transgenerational phenotypic plasticity, whereby the parental environment and offspring environment interact to alter the phenotype of the offspring, is viewed as key to promoting persistence in the face of environmental change. While there has been long-standing interest in the role of transgenerational plasticity via the maternal line (traditionally the field of maternal effects), increasingly it appears that paternal effects can also play a role. Despite the emerging role of paternal effects in studies of global change, key knowledge gaps remain: first, whether paternal effects act to increase or decrease offspring performance remains largely unexplored; second, the relative roles of maternal and paternal effects are rarely disentangled; and third, the role of environmental variation, a key determinant of the benefits of transgenerational plasticity, has not been explored with regard to paternal effects. Here, we explore all three issues using the marine tubeworm Galeolaria caespitosa, an important habitat-forming species in southern Australia. We found that both paternal and maternal experiences affected key stages of offspring performance (fertilization and larval development) and, surprisingly, paternal effects were often stronger than maternal effects. Furthermore, we found that paternal effects often reduced offspring performance, especially when environments varied compared with when environments were stable. Our results suggest that, while transgenerational plasticity may play an important role in modifying the impacts of global change, these effects are not uniformly positive. Importantly, paternal effects can be as strong, or stronger, than maternal effects and environmental variability strongly alters the impacts of paternal effects.
Guillaume et al 2015_Transgenerational plasticity_Fertilisation success data
Galeolaria caespitosa were collected from Brighton marina, Melbourne, Australia in 2013. Adults were brought back to Monash University for two weeks acclimation prior to fertilisation assays. The workbook contains three sheets: 'Fertilisation success', 'Egg measurements'; 'Sperm measurements'. The descriptions of column headings are available in the ReadMe file.
Guillaume et al 2015_Transgenerational plasticity_Offspring survival data
Galeolaria caespitosa were collected from Brighton marina, Melbourne, Australia in 2013 and 2014. Adults were brought back to Monash University for two weeks acclimation prior to larval survival experiments. The column headings are as follows: 'Run' = assay number; 'Date_start' = Starting date for adult acclimation; 'Days_acclimate' = Number of days adults were left to acclimate in their treatment conditions; 'Paternal_envt' = male treatment acclimation temperature (cold ~16.5 deg C; hot ~22.0 deg C); 'Maternal_envt' = female treatment acclimation temperature (cold ~16.5 deg C; hot ~22.0 deg C); 'Offspring_envt' = Fertilisation and incubation temperature of offspring; 'Replicate' = replicated male*female*offspring treatment temperatures A and B; 'Number_eggs in' = Number of successfully fertilised eggs selected for treatment; 'Number_larvae developed' = Number of larvae that developed from the selected eggs; 'Percent_survival' = Percent of larvae that developed from the selected eggs.
Guillaume et al 2015_Transgenerational plasticity_Offspring survival switched male data
Galeolaria caespitosa were collected from Brighton marina, Melbourne, Australia in 2014. Adults were brought back to Monash University for a total of four weeks acclimation prior to larval survival experiments. At two weeks into the acclimation period, half of the males changed acclimation treatment temperatures. The column headings are as follows: 'Run' = assay number; 'Date_start' = Starting date for adult acclimation; 'Paternal_envt1' = the male temperature treatment experienced for the first two weeks of acclimation (cold ~16.5 deg C; hot ~22.0 deg C); 'Paternal_envt2' = the male temperature treatment experienced for the final two weeks of acclimation (cold ~16.5 deg C; hot ~22.0 deg C); 'Maternal_envt' = female treatment acclimation temperature (cold ~16.5 deg C; hot ~22.0 deg C); 'Offspring_envt' = Fertilisation and incubation temperature of offspring; 'Replicate' = replicated male*female*offspring treatment temperatures A and B; 'Number_eggs in' = Number of successfully fertilised eggs selected for treatment; 'Number_larvae developed' = Number of larvae that developed from the selected eggs; 'Percent_survival' = Percent of larvae that developed from the selected eggs.
Guillaume at al 2015_Transgenerational plasticity_Brighton Marina temperature Mar-Sep
Temperature data collected at Middle Brighton Pier, Melbourne, Australia between March and September in 2013. A data logger (Onset HOBO Pendant data logger) was placed adjacent to Galeolaria caespitosa clusters used in experiments. Column headings: 'Date (MM/DD/YY) = date that data was collected in US format; ' Time' = hour, minute and second that data was collected in 12h format; 'Temp, °C' = Temperature recorded in degrees Celsius.