Biology subjects

Sgro, C.

Publications and source records attributed to Sgro, C..

4 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Why development time matters: temperature influences plasticity while nutritional stress reshapes selection and evolutionary potential

The time it takes organisms to reach adulthood is often considered a central life-history trait that influences fitness and is highly plastic across environments. Despite its importance, direct estimates of how selection on development time varies across combinations of environmental stressors remain rare, limiting our understanding of its role in population responses to environmental change. We reared 68 full-sibling families of the vinegar fly, Drosophila melanogaster, at two temperatures (14{degrees}C and 28{degrees}C) on two diets (standard and low-calorie), and measured development time, body size (mass and wing size), egg-to-adult viability and productivity (number of offspring). Temperature caused the largest plastic response, with development taking 4-5 times longer at 14{degrees}C, whereas the low-calorie diet extended development by 20-30%. Yet diet, not temperature, changed directional selection on development time. On the standard diet, faster development was associated with higher fitness at both temperatures. On the low-calorie diet, this advantage disappeared, and at 14{degrees}C slower-developing females tended to produce more offspring. Viability selection showed consistent patterns. The low-calorie diet also increased evolvability in development time c.10-16-fold at both temperatures, and genetic correlations between diets were close to zero, indicating strong genotype-by-environment interactions. Plasticity in development time was not associated with fitness in any treatment. Overall, we provide evidence that development time is a functional trait whose relationship with fitness depends on the environment. Nutritional stress induced a smaller plastic response in development time than temperature, but had a larger effect on directional selection and evolvability. The stressor causing the greatest plastic change in a functional trait is therefore not necessarily the one that shapes its selection and evolution.

evolutionary biology↗

bioRxiv2026

Interactions between thermal and nutritional stress reveal cryptic adaptive potential

Predicting whether populations can adapt fast enough to persist under global change requires understanding how adaptive potential changes with the environment. Theory predicts that cryptic genetic variation hidden under benign conditions may be released under stress, but empirical tests are rare and typically manipulate single stressors in isolation, which is not realistic under global change. Using a quantitative genetic breeding design with Drosophila melanogaster, we quantified additive genetic variance in fitness (female productivity) across combinations of temperature and nutritional stress. We found that nutritional stress increased genetic variance at cold and hot margins. Temperature and diet also interacted to shape which genotypes performed best: nutritional stress weakened genetic correlations across temperatures at the hot margin, whereas genetic correlations across diets strengthened at the cold margin. Adaptive potential is therefore environment-dependent and multidimensional, meaning single stressor experiments are likely to systematically misrepresent adaptive capacity under realistic global change scenarios.

evolutionary biology↗

bioRxiv2023

When is warmer better? Disentangling within- and between-generation effects of thermal history on survival

O_LIUnderstanding the fitness consequences of thermal history is necessary to predict organismal responses to global warming. This is especially challenging for ectotherms with complex life cycles, since distinct life stages can differ in thermal sensitivity, acclimate to different thermal environments, and accrue responses to acclimation within and between generations. C_LIO_LIAlthough acclimation is widely hypothesized to benefit organisms by helping them (or their offspring) to compensate for negative impacts of environmental change, equivocal support for this hypothesis highlights the need to assess alternatives. However, assessments that do so in ways that explicitly dissect responses across life stages and generations remain limited. C_LIO_LIWe assess alternative hypotheses for acclimation responses (none, beneficial, colder-is-better, and warmer-is-better) within and between generations of an externally-fertilizing marine tubeworm whose vulnerability to warming rests on survival at early planktonic stages (gametes, embryos, and larvae). We start by acclimating parents, gametes, and embryos to ambient and projected warmer temperatures (17 {degrees}C and 22 {degrees}C) factorially by life stage. We then rear individuals with differing acclimation histories to the end of larval development at test temperatures from 10 {degrees}C to 28 {degrees}C (upper and lower survival limits) to estimate thermal survival curves for development, and compare curves among acclimation histories. C_LIO_LIWe show that survival curves are most responsive to parental acclimation followed by acclimation at embryogenesis, but are buffered against acclimation at fertilization. Moreover, curves respond independently to acclimation within and between generations, and respond largely as predicted by the warmer-is-better hypothesis, despite the semblance of beneficial acclimation after successive acclimations to warmer temperature. C_LIO_LIOur study demonstrates the varied nature of thermal acclimation, and the importance of considering how acclimation responses aggregate across complex life cycles when predicting vulnerability to warming. C_LI

ecology↗

bioRxiv2021

Drosophila melanogaster females prioritise dietary sterols for producing high quality eggs

Limiting calories or specific nutrients without malnutrition, otherwise known as dietary restriction (DR), has been shown to extend lifespan across a broad range of taxa. Our recent findings in Drosophila melanogaster show that supplementing flies on macronutrient-rich diets with additional cholesterol can extend lifespan to the same extent as DR. Macronutrient-rich diets drive high levels of egg production and in doing so deplete the mothers of somatic sterols that are essential for survival. Thus, DR may be beneficial for lifespan because it reduces egg production which in turn reduces the mothers demand for sterols. If this is true, mothers must be prioritising their available sterols, whether from the diet or from their own bodies, to sustain high quality egg production. To test this, we measured the quality of eggs laid by mothers fed either cholesterol-sufficient or cholesterol-depleted diets. We found that even when the mothers diet was completely devoid of cholesterol, high quality egg production persisted. Furthermore, we show that sterol-supplemented flies with long lives continue to lay high quality eggs that give rise to healthy offspring. Thus, in our assays, long life does not require a fecundity cost.

evolutionary biology↗