Larval diet affects adult reproduction but not survival regardless of injury and infection stress in Drosophila melanogaster

Abstract

Early-life conditions have profound effects on many life-history traits. In particular, early-life diet affects both juvenile development, and adult survival and reproduction. Early-life diet also has consequences for the ability of adults to withstand stressors such as starvation, temperature and desiccation. However, it is less well known how early-life diet influences the ability of adults to respond to infection. Here we test whether varying the larval diet of female Drosophila melanogaster (through altering protein to carbohydrate ratio, P:C) influences the long-term response to injury and infection with the bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas entomophila. Given previous work manipulating adult dietary P:C, we predicted that adults from larvae raised on higher P:C diets would be more likely to survive infection and have increased reproduction, but shorter lifespans and an increased rate of ageing. For larval development, we predicted that low P:C would lead to a longer development time and lower viability. We found that early-life and lifetime egg production were highest at intermediate to high larval P:C diets, but there was no effect of larval P:C on adult survival. Larval diet had no effect on survival or reproduction post-infection. Larval development was quickest on intermediate P:C and egg-to-pupae and egg-to-adult viability were higher on higher P:C. Overall, despite larval P:C affecting several traits measured in this study, we saw no evidence that larval P:C altered the consequence of infection or injury for adult survival and early-life and lifetime reproduction. Taken together, these data suggest that larval diets appear to have a limited impact on adult response to infection.