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Faster Early Development Might Have Its Costs, Study in Salamanders Suggests

ScienceDaily (Jan. 23, 2011) — Fast development is often perceived as an advantage, as it enables better harmony with one's environment and readiness to cope with the challenges that it poses. However, research conducted at the University of Haifa, Israel, and University of California, Santa Cruz, and published in the scientific journal PLoS ONE, found that the acceleration of developmental rate incurs potentially lethal physiological costs for the developing individual. "Our findings are consistent with research findings on other animals and call for further research on rates of development in humans," said Asaf Sadeh who led the study

Faster early development might have its costs, study in salamanders suggests

That you a lot! Very good article even being something most of us already know. Metamorphosing too early for a species is always not positive, the sals are less ready and fit to survive the terrestrial phase. The bigger the metamorph the more success it will have on land. But those larval dessication experiments are surely incredible. Thanks again!

stormcrow73 said:

Faster Early Development Might Have Its Costs, Study in Salamanders Suggests

ScienceDaily (Jan. 23, 2011) — Fast development is often perceived as an advantage, as it enables better harmony with one's environment and readiness to cope with the challenges that it poses. However, research conducted at the University of Haifa, Israel, and University of California, Santa Cruz, and published in the scientific journal PLoS ONE, found that the acceleration of developmental rate incurs potentially lethal physiological costs for the developing individual. "Our findings are consistent with research findings on other animals and call for further research on rates of development in humans," said Asaf Sadeh who led the study

Faster early development might have its costs, study in salamanders suggests

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Dear all,
Me and the team that I'm member of we conduct similar studies on eastern Spatefoot toad (Pelobates syriacus ) - see the attachment.
Also, soon we will finish other studies regarding Triturus dobrogicus.

Best regards

it makes good sense: there has got to be a physiological limit to developmentl speed, on the other hand, any species able to develop quickly will be able to expand its range into colder and drier regions, where summer or wet season are short.

eljorgo said:

That you a lot! Very good article even being something most of us already know. Metamorphosing too early for a species is always not positive, the sals are less ready and fit to survive the terrestrial phase. The bigger the metamorph the more success it will have on land. But those larval dessication experiments are surely incredible. Thanks again!

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Hi,
Thanks all for your comments.
It is known to amphibian ecologists that often metamorphosing earlier allows less time for larval growth, and that reduced size at metamorphosis incurs ecological costs later in life (as explained by eljorgo). What we found is that there is an internal cost in the effort of accelerating the process, regardless of the size that the individual reaches. If you look at the pape in PLoS ONE(PLoS ONE: Compensatory Development and Costs of Plasticity: Larval Responses to Desiccated Conspecifics), you can see that this cost was most evident between two groups that eventually metamorphosed at the same time and same size, but their rates of development varied on the way.

Tudor - thanks for your interesting paper. It is interesting and non-trivial to see that the larvae sense the rates of change in water levels, rather than the water levels themselves. It requires a mechanism for remembering previous states and fitting a curve to extrapolate and predict future conditions, BTW, a friend of mine showed in a beautiful study that plants can do this too for trends in available nutrients, and choose where to invest their root systems: PLoS ONE: The Effects of Nutrient Dynamics on Root Patch Choice

Cheers,
Asaf

Hi
Thank you all for your comments.

It is indeed well known that larvae who metamorphose earlier have less time to grow, and that the resulting smaller size at metamorphosis incurs ecological costs to the adult (as eljorgo explained). Perhaps not clear enough in the press coverage, our work shows a different cost - an internal rather than ecological cost of accelerated development rate. If you take a look at the original paper (PLoS ONE: Compensatory Development and Costs of Plasticity: Larval Responses to Desiccated Conspecifics), you'll see that the greatest cost was evident in comparing two groups that eventually metamorphosed at the same size and time, but used different rates of development on their way there.

Tudor - thanks for your interesting paper. It is interesting and non-trivial that larvae respond to the rates of change in water levels rather than the water level states themselves. Sensing this requires memorizing previous states, and fitting and extrapolating a curve to predict future conditions. Interestingly, a friend of mine showed that plants can do this, perceiving trends in available nutrients to decide where to invest their root systems (PLoS ONE: The Effects of Nutrient Dynamics on Root Patch Choice).

Cheers,
Asaf