Maternal Effects As Adaptations
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Mothers have the ability to profoundly affect the quality of their offspring. In many instances, these maternal effects may be the single most important contributor to variation in offspring fitness. This book explores the wide variety of maternal effects that have evolved in plants and animals as mechanisms of adaptation to temporally and spatially heterogeneous environments.Reviews
"Its main message is that maternal effects may often have evolved as adaptations for life in heterogeneous environments. The nineteen chapters fall into four groups: theoretical and conceptual issues; assessing and measuring maternal effects; reviews of maternal effects in various taxa...; and specific case studies in four taxa..." --Evolution
"The volume edited by Mousseau & Fox is concerned with maternal adaptations, those mechanisms that mothers employ to enhance the fitness of their offspring; with maternal effects, parents contribute more than genes to the next generation. . . . The volume is organized into four parts: (1) recent theoretical developments; (2) assessment and measurement of maternal effects; (3) reviews of maternal effects across taxa; and (4) case studies of the adaptive significance of maternal effects. . . . [Maternal effects] blur the distinction between genetic and environmental components of phenotypic variation and present a range of challenges from conceptual formulation to experimental design and assessment. But, to paraphrase Feller (1971), challenges are not overcome by ignoring them. This excellent volume will allow us both to face the challenges raised by maternal effects and to overcome these challenges, into an even more advanced understanding of adaptation."--Animal Behaviour
"Occasionally there is a multiauthored book that is inspiring enough to revive the interest of evolutionary biologists in some unduly neglected concept. . . . The present book may do [that] for maternal effects. . . . This book challenges us to expand our view of selection and adaptation to include the cross-generational extended phenotypes of parents expressed in their offspring . . . The authors discuss species in which parents choose oviposition sites, incubate eggs, care for or educate their young, and where eggs contain, in addition to nutrients, hormones, antibodies, mRNA, and photoperiod-induced cues. . . . This volume is a high-quality contribution to the literature on phenotypic plasticity, selection and adaptation, and development as an aspect of natural history and evolution. Perhaps the most important message it contains is clear evidence for the role of environmental factors in structuring development from its earliest inception."--The Quarterly Review of Biology
About the Author(s)
Edited by Timothy A. Mousseau, Associate Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, University of South Carolina, Columbia , and Charles W. Fox, Assistant Professor, Fordham University
