Inducible defensive traits of Daphnia pulex against predators are mainly determined by the offspring's environment rather than their mother's experience.

Daphnia can develop a VARIETY of inducible defensive traits when they sense predator kairomone and transmit the predation risk information from females to their offspring. However, limited research has focused on how Daphnia females transmit predation risk information across multiple broods when the mothers and offspring are respectively exposed or not exposed to predation pressure.Here we conducted a prolonged predation risk transmission experiment, where three generations of Daphnia pulex individuals were cultured with or without fish kairomone until they produce six broods of offspring. Life history traits and morphological defensive traits were measured to investigate how inducible defensive traits were transmitted across generations and multiple broods.Our results demonstrated that (1) inducible defensive traits of offspring were mainly determined by the offspring's environment rather than their mothers' experience; and (2) as the mothers produced more broods of offspring, inducible defensive traits of the offspring were gradually increased and then decreased.The present study highlights the reversibility and differences among generations and broods of the transmission of predation risk information via transgenerational effects, which provides a basis for further understanding of transgenerational plasticity across broods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]