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First published online March 2, 2006
Journal of Experimental Biology 209, 1064-1073 (2006)
Published by The Company of Biologists 2006
doi: 10.1242/jeb.02129

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The relative contributions of developmental plasticity and adult acclimation to physiological variation in the tsetse fly, Glossina pallidipes (Diptera, Glossinidae)

John S. Terblanche^1,* and Steven L. Chown²

¹ Spatial, Physiological and Conservation Ecology Group, Department of Botany and Zoology, University of Stellenbosch, Private Bag X1, Matieland, 7602, Stellenbosch, South Africa
² Centre for Invasion Biology, University of Stellenbosch, Private Bag X1, Matieland, 7602, Stellenbosch, South Africa

^* Author for correspondence (e-mail: jst{at}sun.ac.za)

Accepted 26 January 2006

Recent reviews of the adaptive hypotheses for animal responses to acclimation have highlighted the importance of distinguishing between developmental and adult (non-developmental) phenotypic plasticity. There has been little work, however, on separating the effects of developmental plasticity from adult acclimation on physiological traits. Therefore, we investigated the relative contributions of these two distinct forms of plasticity to the environmental physiology of adult tsetse flies by exposing developing pupae or adult flies to different temperatures and comparing their responses. We also exposed flies to different temperatures during development and re-exposed them as adults to the same temperatures, to investigate possible cumulative effects. Critical thermal maxima were relatively inflexible in response to acclimation temperatures (21, 25, 29°C) with plasticity type accounting for the majority of the variation (49–67%, nested ANOVA). By contrast, acclimation had a larger effect on critical thermal minima with treatment temperature accounting for most of the variance (84–92%). Surprisingly little of the variance in desiccation rate could be explained by plasticity type (30–47%). The only significant effect of acclimation temperature on standard (resting) metabolic rate of adult flies was at 21°C, resulting in treatment temperature, rather than plasticity type, accounting for the majority of the variance (30–76%). This study demonstrates that the stage at which acclimation takes place has significant, though often different, effects on several adult physiological traits in G. pallidipes, and therefore that it is not only important to consider the form of plasticity but also the direction of the response and its significance from a life-history perspective.

Key words: intra-specific variation, metabolic rate, phenotypic plasticity, water balance, beneficial acclimation hypothesis, climatic stress resistance, tsetse fly

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