Life history shapes variation in egg composition in the blue tit Cyanistes caeruleus

Maternal investment directly shapes early developmental conditions and therefore has long-term fitness consequences for the offspring. In oviparous species prenatal maternal investment is fixed at the time of laying. To ensure the best survival chances for most of their offspring, females must equip their eggs with the resources required to perform well under various circumstances, yet the actual mechanisms remain unknown. Here we describe the blue tit egg albumen and yolk proteomes and evaluate their potential to mediate maternal effects. We show that variation in egg composition (proteins, lipids, carotenoids) primarily depends on laying order and female age. Egg proteomic profiles are mainly driven by laying order, and investment in the egg proteome is functionally biased among eggs. Our results suggest that maternal effects on egg composition result from both passive and active (partly compensatory) mechanisms, and that variation in egg composition creates diverse biochemical environments for embryonic development. DOI https://doi.org/10.32942/X2GS5S Subjects Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

proteomics, egg composition, life history, maternal investment Dates Published: 2024-09-11 09:29 License CC BY Attribution 4.0 International Additional Metadata Data and Code Availability Statement: Computer code used for figure production can be found at https://osf.io/nqw6v/. The mass spectrometry proteomics data have been deposited to the ProteomeXchange Consortium via the PRIDE partner repository with the dataset identifier PXD009822. The datasets generated during the current study are available at https://osf.io/nqw6v/. Language: English