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Highly fecund mothers sacrifice offspring survival to maximize fitness

Nature volume 405, pages 565–567 (2000)Cite this article

Abstract

Why do highly fecund organisms apparently sacrifice offspring size for increased numbers when offspring survival generally increases with size1,2,3? The theoretical tools for understanding this evolutionary trade-off between number and size of offspring have developed over the past 25 years1,4,5,6,7,8,9,10; however, the absence of data on the relation between offspring size and fitness in highly fecund species, which would control for potentially confounding variables, has caused such models to remain largely hypothetical11,12. Here we manipulate egg size, controlling for maternal trait interactions, and determine the causal consequences of offspring size in a wild population of Atlantic salmon. The joint effect of egg size on egg number and offspring survival resulted in stabilizing phenotypic selection for an optimal size. The optimal egg size differed only marginally from the mean value observed in the population, suggesting that it had evolved mainly in response to selection on maternal rather than offspring fitness. We conclude that maximization of maternal fitness by sacrificing offspring survival may well be a general phenomenon among highly fecund organisms.

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Figure 1: Relation between egg size and relative recapture rate (scaled to a maximum of 1) of juvenile Atlantic salmon 28 (a) and 107 (b) days after median emergence from nests. 

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Acknowledgements

We thank J. G. Backer, K. Bergersen, T. Husebø and the rest of the staff at the NINA Research Station, Ims, for assistance with the experiments. We also thank J. D. Armstrong, P. Fiske, T. Forseth, A. P. Hendry, K. Hindar, B. Jonsson and O. Ugedal for comments on the manuscript. Financial support was provided by a PhD scholarship from the Norwegian Research Council to S.E. and research funding from the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research to I.A.F.

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  1. Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, Tungasletta 2, Trondheim, N-7485, Norway

    Sigurd Einum & Ian A. Fleming

  2. Department of Zoology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, N-7034, Norway

    Sigurd Einum

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  1. Sigurd Einum
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  2. Ian A. Fleming
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Correspondence to Sigurd Einum.

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Einum, S., Fleming, I. Highly fecund mothers sacrifice offspring survival to maximize fitness . Nature 405, 565–567 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35014600

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