Transgenerational plasticity in a zooplankton in response to elevated temperature and parasitism

Organisms are increasingly facing multiple stressors, which can simultaneously interact to cause unpredictable impacts compared to a single stressor alone. Recent evidence suggests that phenotypic plasticity can allow for rapid responses to altered environments, including biotic and abiotic stressors, both within a generation and across generations (transgenerational plasticity). Parents can potentially ‘prime’ their offspring to better cope with similar stressors, or, alternatively, might produce offspring that are less fit because of energetic constraints. At present, it remains unclear exactly how biotic and abiotic stressors jointly mediate the responses of transgenerational plasticity, and whether this plasticity is adaptive. Here we test the effects of biotic and abiotic environmental changes on within- and trans-generational plasticity using a Daphnia-Metschnikowia zooplankton-fungal parasite system. By exposing parents and their offspring consecutively to the single and combined..., We conducted a fully factorial experiment over two generations in the laboratory to assess the adaptive significance of transgenerational plasticity in the host Daphnia dentifera in response to the single or combined effects of elevated temperatures and/or parasite exposure., All analyses were performed in R (version 4.1.2).