What doesn’t kill you makes you (and your descendants) stronger:
early-life exposure to human-induced challenges as a trigger of
compensatory mechanisms
Abstract
Although the negative impact of human-induced environmental effects on
bird populations has been widely demonstrated, the question of whether
adaptive adjustments may potentially arise as a result of unforeseen
challenges is still unclear. Despite their obvious pervasive effect,
human-induced challenges may activate, under certain circumstances,
physiological and behavioural compensatory mechanisms that allow
organisms to cope better with an altered and distressful environment. In
this viewpoint, we highlight that understanding such compensatory
responses (or the lack of them) requires adopting an ontogenetic and
transgenerational perspective, as well as a multidisciplinary approach
that integrates physiology, ageing biology, molecular processes and
behaviour. Given the outstanding capacity for plasticity during
development, we focus on how early-life (human-induced) experiences
potentially shape, even prenatally, specific physiological and molecular
processes (i.e., protection against oxidative damage and telomere
maintenance mechanisms), and lifelong reproductive strategies (i.e.,
maternal allocation into eggs), which may in turn activate physiological
and behavioural adjustments across generations. To test whether such
adjustments in the developmental trajectory allow individuals to make
“the best of a bad situation” or even increase their performance or
that of their offspring in human-altered environments, we call for
studies using a lifelong approach and that explore transgenerational
effects. We thus propose experimental designs that could help the
advancement in the field.