Data from: Carried over: heat stress in the egg stage reduces subsequent performance in a butterfly

Increasing heat stress caused by anthropogenic climate change may pose a substantial challenge to biodiversity due to associated detrimental effects on survival and reproduction. Therefore, heat tolerance has recently received substantial attention, but its variation throughout ontogeny and effects carried over from one developmental stage to another remained largely neglected. To explore to what extent stress experienced early in life affects later life stages, we here investigate effects of heat stress experienced in the egg stage throughout ontogeny in the tropical butterfly Bicyclus anynana. We found that detrimental effects of heat stress in the egg stage were detectable in hatchlings, larvae and even resulting adults, as evidenced by decreased survival, growth, and body mass. This study shows that even in holometabalous insects with discrete life stages effects of stress experienced early in life are carried over to later stages, substantially reducing subsequent fitness. We argue that such effects need to be considered when trying to forecast species responses to climate change.

由人为活动驱动的气候变化所引发的热胁迫加剧，会通过对生物生存与繁殖产生不利影响，对全球生物多样性构成严峻挑战。因此，热耐受性（heat tolerance）近来受到了广泛关注，但学界对其在个体发育（ontogeny）全程的变化规律，以及从某一发育阶段延续至下一阶段的遗留效应，却长期被忽视。为探究生命早期经历的胁迫对后续生命阶段的影响程度，本研究以热带蝴蝶错突眼蝶（Bicyclus anynana）为研究对象，分析其卵期经历的热胁迫在个体发育全程的效应。研究发现，卵期热胁迫的不利影响可在初孵幼虫、幼虫乃至最终发育的成虫身上检测到，具体表现为存活率、生长速率与成虫体重均出现显著下降。本研究表明，即便在具有离散生命阶段的全变态昆虫（holometabolous insects）中，生命早期经历的胁迫效应仍会延续至后续发育阶段，大幅降低后续适合度（fitness）。我们认为，在预测物种对气候变化的响应时，必须将这类遗留效应纳入考量范畴。