Volta

Predictable ecological dynamics over incredibly small spatial scales influence early-life phenotypes in a species with temperature-dependent sex determination

Phenotype-environment associations in neonatal animals may arise in wild environments by virtue of ecological dynamics within the nest. Such dynamics may be of special importance to the evolution of temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD), an enigmatic trait that can be adaptive when the incubation temperatures that affect sexual differentiation also have differential effects on the fitness of the sexes. To infer the causal effects of the nest environment on fitness-relevant phenotypes, we apply structural equation modelling (SEM) to a 14-year dataset of 3085 individual embryos whose position in 179 wild snapping turtle nests could be estimated. We find that temperature has a positive effect on hatchling size, and that the same temperatures that predict hatchling size also predict the sex of …

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