English
 
Help Privacy Policy Disclaimer
  Advanced SearchBrowse

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Released

Journal Article

Adult Influence on Juvenile Phenotypes by Stage-Specific Pheromone Production

MPS-Authors
/persons/resource/persons272586

Werner,  MS
Department Integrative Evolutionary Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Max Planck Society;

/persons/resource/persons273558

Claaßen,  MH
Department Integrative Evolutionary Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Max Planck Society;

/persons/resource/persons272307

Renahan,  T
Department Integrative Evolutionary Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Max Planck Society;

/persons/resource/persons272065

Dardiry,  M
Department Integrative Evolutionary Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Max Planck Society;

/persons/resource/persons271084

Sommer,  RJ
Department Integrative Evolutionary Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Max Planck Society;

External Resource
No external resources are shared
Fulltext (restricted access)
There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.
Fulltext (public)
There are no public fulltexts stored in PuRe
Supplementary Material (public)
There is no public supplementary material available
Citation

Werner, M., Claaßen, M., Renahan, T., Dardiry, M., & Sommer, R. (2018). Adult Influence on Juvenile Phenotypes by Stage-Specific Pheromone Production. iScience, 10, 123-134. doi:10.1016/j.isci.2018.11.027.


Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0003-BA28-F
Abstract
Many animal and plant species respond to population density by phenotypic plasticity. To investigate if specific age classes and/or cross-generational signaling affect density-dependent plasticity, we developed a dye-based method to differentiate co-existing nematode populations. We applied this method to Pristionchus pacificus, which develops a predatory mouth form to exploit alternative resources and kill competitors in response to high population densities. Remarkably, adult, but not juvenile, crowding induces the predatory morph in other juveniles. High-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry of secreted metabolites combined with genetic mutants traced this result to the production of stage-specific pheromones. In particular, the P. pacificus-specific di-ascaroside#1 that induces the predatory morph is induced in the last juvenile stage and young adults, even though mouth forms are no longer plastic in adults. Cross-generational signaling between adults and juveniles may serve as an indication of rapidly increasing population size, arguing that age classes are an important component of phenotypic plasticity.