Maternal effects are long lasting and influence female offspring’s reproductive strategy in the swordtail fish Xiphophorus multilineatus

The adaptive benefits of maternal investment into individual offspring (inherited environmental effects) will be shaped by selection on mothers as well as their offspring, often across variable environments. We examined how a mother’s nutritional environment interacted with her offspring’s nutritional and social environment in Xiphophorus multilineatus, a livebearing fish. Fry from mothers reared on two different nutritional diets (HQ = high quality, and LQ = low quality) were all reared on a LQ diet in addition to being split between two social treatments: exposed to a large adult male during development, and not exposed. Mothers raised on a HQ diet produce offspring that were not only initially larger (at 14 days of age), but grew faster, and were larger at sexual maturity, suggesting that the fry produced by mothers on LQ diets were at a disadvantage. Male offspring from mothers raised on both diets responded to the exposure to courter males by growing faster, however the response of...