Adult phenology meets offspring thermal performance: are they linked?

Reproductive timing (phenology) and thermal performance are crucial traits for modulating organismal responses to climate change.

In seasonal environments, these traits are inherently connected such that the reproductive timing of the parental generation dictates the thermal environment experienced by the early life-stages of offspring, which have direct impact on their development, physiology and survival.

It can thus by hypothesized that natural selection should promote some form of coupling between phenology and offspring thermal performance, but this association remains poorly understood.I will use the model species Esox lucius pike and combine longitudinal studies in the wild of individual phenology using remote biologgers (WP1, year 1-3) with hormonal manipulation of reproductive timing and split-brood temperature manipulation experiments (WP2, year 1-3) as well as genetic association analyses (WP3, year 1).

This integrative approach will uncover how genes, the environment, and intrinsic factors modulate phenology and disentangle the respective role of heritable genetic variation and transgenerational plasticity in linking phenology with offspring thermal performance.Collectively, this project informs how and why phenology vary among and within individuals and how this is linked to offspring thermal performance.

This is imperative for understanding and predicting how organisms cope with seasonal environments and may adapt to climate change.