Effects of food restriction across stages of juvenile and early adult development on body weight, survival, and adult life history

Organisms have to allocate limited resources among multiple life history traits, which can result in physiological trade-offs, and variation in environmental conditions experienced during ontogeny can influence reproduction later in life. Food restriction may lead to an adaptive reallocation of the limited resources among traits as a phenotypically plastic adjustment, or it can act as an overall constraint with detrimental effects throughout reproductive life. In this study, we investigated experimentally the effects of food restriction during different stages of the juvenile and early adult development on body weight, survival and reproductive success in females and males of the European earwig Forficula auricularia. Individuals either received limited or unlimited access to food across three different stages of development (fully crossed) allowing us to identify sensitive periods during development and to test both additive and interactive effects of food limitation across stages on development and reproduction. Food restriction during the early and late juvenile stage had additive negative effects on juvenile survival and adult body weight. With regard to reproductive success of females (which produce up to two clutches in their lifetime), restriction specifically in the late juvenile stage led to smaller first and second clutch size, lower probability of second clutch production, and reduced hatching success in the second clutch. Reproductive success of females was not significantly affected when their male mates experienced food restriction during their development. Our findings in general support the ‘silver spoon’ hypothesis in that food restriction during juvenile development poses constraints on development and reproduction throughout life.