Development is a complex and highly dynamic process involving the cross talk among genes, maternal effects and environmental circumstances. Widespread evidence from plant to animal species show that variation in developmental conditions can modulate life history trajectories and influence key traits, such as growth, reproduction, and senescence. These effects are not limited to a single generation but can also be passed on future generations. This book aims to bring together studies of early life effects from the fields of evolutionary biology, global change biology, and biomedicine to synthesise and improve current knowledge of the mechanisms involved, and how variation in early life conditions translates into Darwinian fitness outcomes. Relying on examples of organisms' responses to the ongoing and future environmental challenges of the Anthropocene, this book takes a novel approach to address the adaptive meaning of early life effects. The book has a broad scientific approach, targeting eco-evolutionary biologists, behavioural biologists, eco-physiologists, eco-toxicologists, as well as epidemiologists and biomedical scientists.

Focuses on the impact of early life experience on the adult phenotype, from its functions to its evolutionary meaning Multi-species and inter-disciplinary to enable the reader to assess the topic from multiple perspectives Includes novel ideas and approaches to understand the evolution of development strategies

Autorentext

David Costantini is Professor at Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. His research combines studies of mechanisms and functions to understand the causes and consequences of phenotypic variation in animals. He authored 152 publications, including two books as author. He was the recipient of the International Prize for a scholar of Organism Evolutionary Zoology issued from the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in 2013. He has been included in the list of top 1% of the most-cited scientists across all scientific fields created by the University of Stanford in 2019.
Valeria Marasco's research focuses on proximate factors underlying the effects of changing environmental conditions on phenotypic flexibility and life-history strategies with an emphasis on early life effects. Since 2017, she works at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Comparative Behavioural Research (Vetmeduni Vienna, Austria) as a Post-Doctoral Fellow. She was initially funded by a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (2017-2019) and currently by a Lise Meitner FWF Fellowship.

Inhalt

Part I. Evolutionary Meaning of Development: How and Why Early Life Experience Generate Diversity .- Chapter 1. More than Fifty Shades of Epigenetics for the Study of Early in Life Effects in Medicine, Ecology and Evolution.- Chapter 2. For Better or Worse: Benefits and Costs of Transgenerational Plasticity and the Transhormesis Hypothesis.- Chapter 3. Adaptive Meaning of Early Life Experience in Species that Go Through Metamorphosis.- Part II. Endogenous Mechanisms Underlying the Interactions Between the Individual and Its Early-Life Environment .- Chapter 4. Early-Life Stress Drives the Molecular Mechanisms Shaping the Adult Phenotype.- Chapter 5. Environmental Conditions in Early Life, Host Defenses and Disease in Late Life.- Chapter 6. Early Life Nutrition and the Programming of the Phenotype.- Part III. Anthropocene Opens New Horizons to Reveal the Adaptive Meaning of Developmental Plasticity.- Chapter 7. **** Adaptive and Maladaptive Consequences of LarvalStressors for Metamorphic and Postmetamorphic Traits and Fitness.- Chapter 8. Plastic Aliens: Developmental Plasticity and the Spread of Invasive Species.- Chapter 9. Consequences of Developmental Exposure to Pollution: Importance of Stress-Coping Mechanisms.