Maternal Effects, Developmental Plasticity, And Life History Evolution: <i>An Amphibian Model</i>

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>In many frogs and salamanders the largest investment made in progeny is in the provisioning of eggs with material and energy. At the time a female makes this substantial contribution, the environment that her offspring will experience may be unpredictable. How much influence does uncertainty in the larval environment exert over the way in which this maternal investment is allocated? Much progress was made in answering this question by using optimality techniques and their accompanying assumptions (e.g., Roff 1992; Stearns 1992). These techniques were firmly based on neo-Darwinian principles emphasizing natural selection among phenotypic variants that result directly from the action of discrete genes. This is apparent in the amphibian literature where models were developed to explain different patterns of reproductive allocation with the major assumptions being that for a given amount of reproductive expenditure, a female may produce many small offspring or few large offspring, and that offspring fitness is positively related to investment in offspring (Smith and Fretwell 1974; Brockelman 1975; Wilbur 1977).</jats:p>