How effective are maternal effects at having effects?

How effective are maternal effects at having effects?

The well studied trade-off between offspring size and offspring number assumes that offspring fitness increases with increasing per-offspring investment. Where mothers differ genetically or exhibit plastic variation in reproductive effort, there can be variation in per capita investment in offspring, and via this trade-off, variation in fecundity. Variation in per capita investment will affect ...

Food Taxes: How Likely Are Likely Effects?

food taxes: how likely are likely effects?

How Large Are Teacher Effects?

It is widelv accepted that teachers differ in their effectiveness, yet the empirical evidence regarding teacher effectiveness is weak. The existing evidence is mainly drawn from econometric studies that use covariates to attempt to controlfbr selec tion effects that might bias results. We use data from a four-year experiment in which teachers and students were randomly assigned to classes to es...

What are maternal effects (and what are they not)?

Maternal effects can play an important role in a diversity of ecological and evolutionary processes such as population dynamics, phenotypic plasticity, niche construction, life-history evolution and the evolutionary response to selection. However, although maternal effects were defined by quantitative geneticists well over half a century ago, there remains some confusion over exactly what pheno...