Evolution of anticipatory effects mediated by epigenetic changes

Abstract

Anticipatory effects mediated by epigenetic changes occur when parents modify the phenotype of their offspring by making epigenetic changes in their gametes guided by information from an environmental cue. To investigate when do anticipatory effects mediated by epigenetic changes evolve in a fluctuating environment, I use an individual based simulation model with explicit genetic architecture. The model allows for the population to respond to environmental changes by evolving plasticity, bet-hedging, or by tracking the environment with genetic adaptation, in addition to the evolution of anticipatory effects. The results show that anticipatory effects evolve when the environmental cue provides reliable information about the environment and the environment changes at intermediate rates, provided that fitness costs of anticipatory effects are rather low. Moreover, evolution of anticipatory effects is quite robust to different genetic architectures when reliability of the environmental cue is high. Anticipatory effects always give smaller fitness benefits than within generation plasticity, suggesting a possible reason for generally small observed anticipatory effects in empirical studies.