One of the more common patterns of offspring size variation is that mothers tend to produce larger offspring at lower temperatures. Whether such variation is adaptive remains unclear. Determining whether optimal offspring size differs between thermal environments provides a direct way of assessing the adaptive significance of temperature-driven variation in egg size. Here, we examined the relat...

Since Smith and Fretwell's seminal article in 1974 on the optimal offspring size, most theory has assumed a trade-off between offspring number and offspring fitness, where larger offspring have better survival or fitness, but with diminishing returns. In this article, we use two ubiquitous biological mechanisms to derive the shape of this trade-off: the offspring's growth rate combined with its...

OBJECTIVE Panic disorder (PD) has been linked to perturbed processing of threats. This study tested the hypotheses that offspring of parents with PD and offspring with anxiety disorders display relatively greater sensitivity and attention allocation to fear provocation. METHOD Offspring of adults with PD, major depressive disorder (MDD), or no disorder (ages 9-19) viewed computer-presented fa...

The number of offspring attaining reproductive age is an important measure of an individual's fitness. However, reproductive success is generally constrained by a trade-off between offspring number and quality. We conducted a factorial experiment in order to study the effects of an artificial enlargement of offspring number and size on the reproductive success of female bank voles (Clethrionomy...

Children of mothers with gestational diabetes have greater risk of developing hypertension but little is known about the mechanisms by which this occurs. The objective of this study was to test the hypothesis that high maternal concentrations of leptin during pregnancy, which are present in mothers with gestational diabetes and/or obesity, alter blood pressure, vascular structure and vascular f...

Across mammals, prenatal maternal stress (PREMS) affects many aspects of offspring development, including offspring growth. However, how PREMS translates to offspring growth is inconsistent, even within species. To explain the full range of reported effects of prenatal adversity on offspring growth, we propose an integrative hypothesis: developmental constraints and a counteracting adaptive gro...

In many animals, including humans, interactions with caring parents can have long-lasting effects on offspring sensitivity to stressors. However, whether these parental effects impact offspring fitness in nature is often unclear. In addition, despite evidence that maternal care can influence offspring behaviour via epigenetic alterations to the genome, it remains unclear whether paternal care h...

OBJECTIVE This study examined the effect of maternal pregestational type 1 diabetes on offspring primary school performance. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS We performed a prospective combined clinical and register-based cohort study comparing primary school performance in offspring (n = 707) of women with pregestational type 1 diabetes with matched control offspring (n = 60,341). We also examine...

Given a trade-off between offspring size and number, all mothers are predicted to produce the same optimal-sized offspring in a given environment. In many species, however, larger and/or older mothers produce bigger offspring. There are several hypotheses to explain this but they lack strong empirical support. In organisms with indeterminate growth, there is the additional problem that maternal...

It is widely recognized that maternal phenotype can have important effects on offspring, but paternal phenotype is generally assumed to have no influence in animals lacking paternal care. Nonetheless, selection may favour the transfer of environmentally acquired condition to offspring from both parents. Using a split-brood, cross-generational laboratory design, we manipulated a key environmenta...