Data from: Adaptive maternal behavioral plasticity and developmental programming mitigate the transgenerational effects of temperature in dung beetles

Phenotypic plasticity allows organisms to cope with rapid environmental
change. Yet exactly when during ontogeny plastic responses are elicited,
whether plastic responses produced in one generation influence phenotypic
variation and fitness in subsequent generations, and the role of
plasticity in shaping population divergences, remains overall poorly
understood. Here, we use the dung beetle Onthophagus taurus to assess
plastic responses to temperature at several life stages bridging three
generations and compare these responses across three recently diverged
populations. We find that beetles reared at hotter temperatures grow less
than those reared at mild temperatures, and that this attenuated growth
has transgenerational consequences by reducing offspring size and survival
in subsequent generations. However, we also find evidence that plasticity
may mitigate these consequences in two ways: (i) mothers modify the
temperature of their offspring’s developmental environment via behavioral
plasticity and (ii) in one population, offspring exhibit accelerated
growth when exposed to hot temperatures during very early development
(“developmental programming”). Lastly, our study reveals that offspring
responses to temperature diverged among populations in fewer than 100
generations, possibly in response to range-specific changes in climatic or
social conditions.