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Patterns and fitness consequences of intraclutch variation in egg provisioning in tropical Australian frogs

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Abstract

Intraclutch variation in offspring size should evolve when offspring encounter unpredictable environmental conditions. This form of bet-hedging should maximise the lifetime reproductive success of individuals that engage it. We documented the numbers of eggs and means and variances of yolk volume in 15 frog species that occur in tropical savanna woodland. We experimentally determined the effects of initial yolk volume on larval growth patterns in four species. Intraclutch variation in yolk volume occurred to some degree in all species surveyed. Some species had very low, others had very high, intraclutch variation in yolk volume, but all species in which some clutches were highly variable also produced clutches with low variability. Species that occur in areas where the offspring environment is likely to be unpredictable had elevated levels of intraclutch variation in egg provisioning. There was no trade-off between egg size and number in any species surveyed. Under benign laboratory conditions, tadpoles from eggs with larger yolk volumes hatched at larger sizes, and these size differences persisted through a substantial proportion of the larval stage. This indicates that intraclutch variation in egg size has major offspring and thus parental fitness consequences, and is therefore a functional selection variable. This study provides evidence in support of models which predict that intraclutch variation in offspring provisioning can evolve in organisms that reproduce in unpredictable habitats.

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Acknowledgements

Sacha Jellinek provided excellent assistance with fieldwork and experiments and the amount of data collected would not have been possible without his help. R. Black, J. D. Roberts and P. Doughty provided very helpful comments on the manuscript. All research in this study received ethical clearance from the James Cook University Experimentation Ethics Review Committee (Approval Number A452) and all collection of animals was conducted with and within the guidelines of a Scientific Purposes Permit (Permit Number N0/001257/96/SAA) issued by the Department of Environment and Heritage, Queensland, Australia. The research was funded by a minor research grant to RAA from James Cook University.

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  1. Martin A. Dziminski

    Present address: School of Animal Biology (M092), University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Hwy, Crawley, WA, 6009, Australia

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Tropical Biology, James Cook University, Townsville, Australia

    Martin A. Dziminski & Ross A. Alford

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  1. Martin A. Dziminski
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  2. Ross A. Alford
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Correspondence to Martin A. Dziminski.

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Communicated by Roland Brandl

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Dziminski, M.A., Alford, R.A. Patterns and fitness consequences of intraclutch variation in egg provisioning in tropical Australian frogs. Oecologia 146, 98–109 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-005-0177-2

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