Legacy effects: impacts of parental and early life environments
Parental and early life environments can prime organisms for the environments they are likely to face in the future. Phenotypic changes that arise as a result of parental and early life effects may be functionally adaptive if they improve offspring fitness, thereby creating feedbacks that influence evolutionary trajectories. We explore these questions on both rocky shores and oyster reefs.
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Legacy of predators on rocky shores
We are interested in how parental and early life exposure to predation risk (cues from the green crab Carcinus maenas) affect risk responses in prey snails (Nucella lapillus) on New England rocky shores. Current projects involve exploring the context dependency of these legacy effects.
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Legacy of climate change stressors on oysters
We are using eastern oysters to study how early life exposure to two climate change stressors -- hypoxia and warming -- affects fitness-related traits like growth and fecundity. Oysters also provide important ecosystem services, including nitrogen storage, and their ability to provide these services can be affected by past exposure to stress. We're currently quantifying how carryover effects change across oyster ontogeny in a collaborative NSF grant with Tom Miller at UMCES and Sarah Gignoux-Wolfsohn at UMass Lowell.
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