Maternal Effect Senescence and Fitness: A Demographic Analysis of a Novel Model Organism

Abstract

Maternal effect senescence--a decline in offspring fitness with maternal age--has been demonstrated in a range of taxa, including humans. Despite decades of phenotypic studies, it remains unclear how maternal effect senescence impacts population structure or evolutionary fitness. To understand the impact of maternal effect senescence on population dynamics, fitness, and selection, we used data from individual-based culture experiments on the microscopic aquatic invertebrate, Brachionus manjavacas (Rotifera), to develop a series of matrix population models in which individuals are classified jointly by age and maternal age. By comparing the results derived from models with and without maternal effects, we found that the fitness difference due to maternal effect senescence arises primarily through decreased fertility, particularly at maternal ages corresponding to the peak reproductive output. In all models, selection gradients decrease with increasing age. They also decrease with maternal age for large maternal ages, implying that maternal effect senescence can evolve through the same process as in Hamiltons theory of the evolution of demographic senescence. We find that maternal effect senescence significantly alters population structure and fitness for B. manjavacas, a species with high maternal investment and maximum reproduction in early-to mid-life. The models developed here were built with data from an emerging model organism, and are widely applicable to evaluate the fitness consequences of maternal effect senescence across species with diverse aging and fertility schedule phenotypes.