Parasite infestation influences life history but not boldness behavior in placental live-bearing fish.

Content Provider	Europe PMC
Author	Hagmayer, Andres Furness, Andrew I. Pollux, Bart J. A.
Abstract	Parasites can negatively affect the reproductive success of hosts. Placental species may be particularly susceptible, because parasite-induced stress during pregnancy could potentially influence embryo development. Here, we examine the consequences of a trematode infestation (black spot disease, BSD) for fetal development and adult behavior in 19 natural populations of the placental live-bearing fish species Poeciliopsis retropinna (Poeciliidae) in Costa Rica. First, we observed substantial variation in parasite infestation among populations which correlated with a number of local environmental conditions (elevation, river width, depth, and flow velocity). Furthermore, we observed substantial variation in parasite infestation among females within populations associated with maternal age and size. We found that the infestation rate significantly influenced embryonic development, with more heavily parasitized females producing smaller and worse-conditioned offspring at birth, possibly, because a costly immune response during pregnancy limits, either directly or indirectly, nourishment to developing embryos. Finally, a behavioral experiment in the field showed that the infestation rate did not affect an individual’s boldness. Our study indicates that in placental live-bearing fish parasite infestation leads to reduced embryo provisioning during pregnancy, resulting in a smaller offspring size and quality at birth potentially with negative implications for offspring fitness.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s00442-020-04795-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Related Links	https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC7683485&blobtype=pdf
ISSN	00298549
Journal	Oecologia
Volume Number	194
DOI	10.1007/s00442-020-04795-6
PubMed Central reference number	PMC7683485
Issue Number	4
PubMed reference number	33141323
e-ISSN	14321939
Language	English
Publisher	Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Publisher Date	2020-11-03
Publisher Place	Berlin/Heidelberg
Access Restriction	Open
Rights License	Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. © The Author(s) 2020
Subject Keyword	Matrotrophy Parasites Placenta Poeciliidae Poeciliopsis retropinna
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics