Abstract
Adult females have to decide how much of their available nutrients to invest in themselves, how many offspring to invest in and how much to invest in each one. These traits are likely to be inter-related and form a trade-off surface, with the organism's position on the trade-off surface depending on its age and availability of resources. We aim to describe the phenotypic trade-off surface empirically by assessing the reproductive decisions (offspring quality and quantity) in relationship to parental age and resources available (food quality and quantity). The data will give understanding of physiological mechanisms of the different components traded-off, the ability to estimate fitness consequences of decisions (for parents and offspring), and hence their adaptive nature, and the population consequences (such as whether maternal effects can destabilise dynamics).
United Kingdom