Tree adaptive growth (TAG) model: a life-history theory-based analytical model for post-thinning forest stand dynamics

Background

Understanding stand dynamics is essential for predicting future wood supply and associated ecosystem services for sustainable forest management. The dynamics of natural stands can be characterized by age-dependent growth and yield models. However, dynamics in managed stands appear somewhat different from that of natural stands, especially with difficulties in explaining the phenomenon of post-thinning overcompensation, based upon some long-term observations. Though overcompensation is an ideal outcome for the forest sector, it had been largely treated as an outlier and thus ignored or dismissed as "out-of-the-ordinary".

Methodology

We developed a life history theory-based, state-dependent model of Tree Adaptive Growth (TAG) to investigate this phenomenon and verified that overcompensation should be a common outcome in post-thinning forest stands when the stand growth over time is sigmoid shaped. TAG posits that individual trees will invest proportionately more into growth following thinning because it is evolutionarily adaptive to do so.

Results

Our investigation of the model's behavior unearthed diverse stand growth patterns similar to that which is observed in the empirical datasets and predicted by a statistics-based Tree's Compensatory Growth (TreeCG) model.

Conclusion

A simple, theory-driven, analytical model, TAG, can reproduce the diverse growth patterns in post-thinning stands and thus assist addressing silviculture-related issues. The model can be applied to various jurisdictions even without detailed regional growth and yield relationships and is capable of incorporating the effects of other time sensitive factors like fertilization, pruning, and climate change.

Predation stress experienced as immature mites extends their lifespan

The early-life experience is important in modulating the late-life performance of individuals. It has been predicted that there were trade-offs between early-life fitness and late-life success. Most of the studies on senescence have focused on the trade-offs between the reproduction and lifespan, and the influences of diet, mating, and other factors. Because the negative, non-consumptive effects of predators could also modulate the behaviour and underlying mechanisms of the prey, this study aimed to examine the different effects of predator-induced stress experienced in the early life compared with later life of the prey. The prey (Tyrophagus putrescentiae) was exposed to predation stress from the predator (Neoseiulus cucumeris) during different periods of its life (immature, oviposition period, and post-oviposition period). The results showed that the predation stress experienced during immature stages delayed development by 7.3% and prolonged lifespan by 9.7%, while predation stress experienced in the adult stage (both oviposition and post-oviposition periods) decreased lifespans of T. putrescentiae (by 24.8% and 28.7%, respectively). Predation stress experienced during immature stages also reduced female fecundity by 7.3%, whereas that experienced during the oviposition period reduced fecundity of the prey by 50.7%. This study demonstrated for the first time lifespan extension by exposure to predation stress when young and highlighted the importance of early-life experience to aging and lifespan.

Development time mediates the effect of larval diet on ageing and mating success of male antler flies in the wild

High-quality developmental environments often improve individual performance into adulthood, but allocating toward early life traits, such as growth, development rate and reproduction, may lead to trade-offs with late-life performance. It is, therefore, uncertain how a rich developmental environment will affect the ageing process (senescence), particularly in wild insects. To investigate the effects of early life environmental quality on insect life-history traits, including senescence, we reared larval antler flies (Protopiophila litigata) on four diets of varying nutrient concentration, then recorded survival and mating success of adult males released in the wild. Declining diet quality was associated with slower development, but had no effect on other life-history traits once development time was accounted for. Fast-developing males were larger and lived longer, but experienced more rapid senescence in survival and lower average mating rate compared to slow developers. Ultimately, larval diet, development time and body size did not predict lifetime mating success. Thus, a rich environment led to a mixture of apparent benefits and costs, mediated by development time. Our results indicate that 'silver spoon' effects can be complex and that development time mediates the response of adult life-history traits to early life environmental quality.

Physiological dynamics, reproduction-maintenance allocations, and life history evolution

Allocation of resources to competing processes of growth, maintenance, or reproduction is arguably a key process driving the physiology of life history trade-offs and has been shown to affect immune defenses, the evolution of aging, and the evolutionary ecology of offspring quality. Here, we develop a framework to investigate the evolutionary consequences of physiological dynamics by developing theory linking reproductive cell dynamics and components of fitness associated with costly resource allocation decisions to broader life history consequences. We scale these reproductive cell allocation decisions to population-level survival and fecundity using a life history approach and explore the effects of investment in reproduction or tissue-specific repair (somatic or reproductive) on the force of selection, reproductive effort, and resource allocation decisions. At the cellular level, we show that investment in protecting reproductive cells increases fitness when reproductive cell maturation rate is high or reproductive cell death is high. At the population level, life history fitness measures show that cellular protection increases reproductive value by differential investment in somatic or reproductive cells and the optimal allocation of resources to reproduction is moulded by this level of investment. Our model provides a framework to understand the evolutionary consequences of physiological processes underlying trade-offs and highlights the insights to be gained from considering fitness at multiple levels, from cell dynamics through to population growth.

Redox-regulation and life-history trade-offs: scavenging mitochondrial ROS improves growth in a wild bird

It has been proposed that animals usually restrain their growth because fast growth leads to an increased production of mitochondrial reactive oxygen species (mtROS), which can damage mitochondrial DNA and promote mitochondrial dysfunction. Here, we explicitly test whether this occurs in a wild bird by supplementing chicks with a mitochondria-targeted ROS scavenger, mitoubiquinone (mitoQ), and examining growth rates and mtDNA damage. In the yellow-legged gull Larus michahellis, mitoQ supplementation increased the early growth rate of chicks but did not reduce mtDNA damage. The level of mtDNA damage was negatively correlated with chick mass, but this relationship was not affected by the mitoQ treatment. We also found that chick growth was positively correlated with both mtDNA copy number and the mitochondrial enzymatic activity of citrate synthase, suggesting a link between mitochondrial content and growth. Additionally, we found that MitoQ supplementation increased mitochondrial content (in males), altered the relationship between mtDNA copy number and damage, and downregulated some transcriptional pathways related to cell rejuvenation, suggesting that scavenging mtROS during development enhanced growth rates but at the expense of cellular turnover. Our study confirms the central role of mitochondria modulating life-history trade-offs during development by other mechanisms than mtROS-inflicted damage.

Birth mass is the key to understanding the negative correlation between lifespan and body size in dogs

Larger dog breeds live shorter than the smaller ones, opposite of the mass-lifespan relationship observed across mammalian species. Here we use data from 90 dog breeds and a theoretical model based on the first principles of energy conservation and life history tradeoffs to explain the negative correlation between longevity and body size in dogs. We found that the birth/adult mass ratio of dogs scales negatively with adult size, which is different than the weak interspecific scaling in mammals. Using the model, we show that this ratio, as an index of energy required for growth, is the key to understanding why the lifespan of dogs scales negatively with body size. The model also predicts that the difference in mass-specific lifetime metabolic energy usage between dog breeds is proportional to the difference in birth/adult mass ratio. Empirical data on lifespan, body mass, and metabolic scaling law of dogs strongly supports this prediction.

Cellular oxidative damage is more sensitive to biosynthetic rate than to metabolic rate: A test of the theoretical model on hornworms (Manduca sexta larvae)

We develop a theoretical model from an energetic viewpoint for unraveling the entangled effects of metabolic and biosynthetic rates on oxidative cellular damage accumulation during animal's growth, and test the model by experiments in hornworms. The theoretical consideration suggests that most of the cellular damages caused by the oxidative metabolism can be repaired by the efficient maintenance mechanisms, if the energy required by repair is unlimited. However, during growth a considerable amount of energy is allocated to the biosynthesis, which entails tradeoffs with the requirements of repair. Thus, the model predicts that cellular damage is more influenced by the biosynthetic rate than the metabolic rate. To test the prediction, we induced broad variations in metabolic and biosynthetic rates in hornworms, and assayed the lipid peroxidation and protein carbonyl. We found that the increase in the cellular damage was mainly caused by the increase in biosynthetic rate, and the variations in metabolic rate had negligible effect. The oxidative stress hypothesis of aging suggests that high metabolism leads to high cellular damage and short lifespan. However, some empirical studies showed that varying biosynthetic rate, rather than metabolic rate, changes animal's lifespan. The conflicts between the empirical evidence and the hypothesis are reconciled by this study.

Perturbations in growth trajectory due to early diet affect age-related deterioration in performance

Fluctuations in early developmental conditions can cause changes in growth trajectories that subsequently affect the adult phenotype. Here, we investigated whether compensatory growth has long-term consequences for patterns of senescence.Using three-spined sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus), we show that a brief period of dietary manipulation in early life affected skeletal growth rate not only during the manipulation itself, but also during a subsequent compensatory phase when fish caught up in size with controls.However, this growth acceleration influenced swimming endurance and its decline over the course of the breeding season, with a faster decline in fish that had undergone faster growth compensation.Similarly, accelerated growth led to a more pronounced reduction in the breeding period (as indicated by the duration of sexual ornamentation) over the following two breeding seasons, suggesting faster reproductive senescence. Parallel experiments showed a heightened effect of accelerated growth on these age-related declines in performance if the fish were under greater time stress to complete their compensation prior to the breeding season.Compensatory growth led to a reduction in median life span of 12% compared to steadily growing controls. While life span was independent of the eventual adult size attained, it was negatively correlated with the age-related decline in swimming endurance and sexual ornamentation.These results, complementary to those found when growth trajectories were altered by temperature rather than dietary manipulations, show that the costs of accelerated growth can last well beyond the time over which growth rates differ and are affected by the time available until an approaching life-history event such as reproduction.

Disposable Soma Theory and the Evolution of Maternal Effects on Ageing

Maternal effects are ubiquitous in nature and affect a wide range of offspring phenotypes. Recent research suggests that maternal effects also contribute to ageing, but the theoretical basis for these observations is poorly understood. Here we develop a simple model to derive expectations for (i) if maternal effects on ageing evolve; (ii) the strength of maternal effects on ageing relative to direct environmental effects; and (iii) the predicted relationships between environmental quality, maternal age and offspring lifespan. Our model is based on the disposable soma theory of ageing, and the key assumption is thus that mothers trade off their own somatic maintenance against investment in offspring. This trade-off affects the biological age of offspring at birth in terms of accumulated damage, as indicated by biomarkers such as oxidative stress or telomere length. We find that the optimal allocation between investment in maternal somatic investment and investment in offspring results in old mothers and mothers with low resource availability producing offspring with reduced life span. Furthermore, the effects are interactive, such that the strongest maternal age effects on offspring lifespan are found under low resource availability. These findings are broadly consistent with results from laboratory studies investigating the onset and rate of ageing and field studies examining maternal effects on ageing in the wild.

Population divergence in compensatory growth responses and their costs in sticklebacks

Compensatory growth (CG) may be an adaptive mechanism that helps to restore an organisms’ growth trajectory and adult size from deviations caused by early life resource limitation. Yet, few studies have investigated the genetic basis of CG potential and existence of genetically based population differentiation in CG potential. We studied population differentiation, genetic basis, and costs of CG potential in nine-spined sticklebacks (Pungitius pungitius) differing in their normal growth patterns. As selection favors large body size in pond and small body size in marine populations, we expected CG to occur in the pond but not in the marine population. By manipulating feeding conditions (viz. high, low and recovery feeding treatments), we found clear evidence for CG in the pond but not in the marine population, as well as evidence for catch-up growth (i.e., size compensation without growth acceleration) in both populations. In the marine population, overcompensation occurred individuals from the recovery treatment grew eventually larger than those from the high feeding treatment. In both populations, the recovery feeding treatment reduced maturation probability. The recovery feeding treatment also reduced survival probability in the marine but not in the pond population. Analysis of interpopulation hybrids further suggested that both genetic and maternal effects contributed to the population differences in CG. Hence, apart from demonstrating intrinsic costs for recovery growth, both genetic and maternal effects were identified to be important modulators of CG responses. The results provide an evidence for adaptive differentiation in recovery growth potential.

Early growth trajectories affect sexual responsiveness

The trajectory of an animal's growth in early development has been shown to have long-term effects on a range of life-history traits. Although it is known that individual differences in behaviour may also be related to certain life-history traits, the linkage between early growth or development and individual variation in behaviour has received little attention. We used brief temperature manipulations, independent of food availability, to stimulate compensatory growth in juvenile three-spined sticklebacks Gasterosteus aculeatus. Here, we examine how these manipulated growth trajectories affected the sexual responsiveness of the male fish at the time of sexual maturation, explore associations between reproductive behaviour and investment and lifespan and test whether the perceived time stress (until the onset of the breeding season) influenced such trade-offs. We found a negative impact of growth rate on sexual responsiveness: fish induced (by temperature manipulation) to grow slowest prior to the breeding season were consistently quickest to respond to the presence of a gravid female. This speed of sexual responsiveness was also positively correlated with the rate of development of sexual ornaments and time taken to build a nest. However, after controlling for effects of growth rate, those males that had the greatest sexual responsiveness to females had the shortest lifespan. Moreover, the time available to compensate in size before the onset of the breeding season (time stress) affected the magnitude of these effects. Our results demonstrate that developmental perturbations in early life can influence mating behaviour, with long-term effects on longevity.

Experimental demonstration of the growth rate--lifespan trade-off

The hypothesized negative relationship between growth rate and lifespan has proved very difficult to test robustly because of potentially confounding variables, particularly nutrient availability and final size. Here we provide, to our knowledge, the first rigorous experimental test of this hypothesis, and find dramatic changes in lifespan in the predicted direction in response to both upward and downward manipulations of growth rates. We used brief (less than 4% of median lifespan) exposure to relatively cold or warm temperatures early in life to deflect juvenile three-spined sticklebacks Gasterosteus aculeatus from their normal growth trajectories; this induced catch-up or slowed-down growth when ambient temperatures were restored, and all groups attained the same average adult size. Catch-up growth led to a reduction in median lifespan of 14.5 per cent, while slowed-down growth extended lifespan by 30.6 per cent. These lifespan effects were independent of eventual size attained or reproductive investment in adult life. Photoperiod manipulations showed that the effects of compensatory growth on lifespan were also influenced by time available for growth prior to breeding, being more extreme when less time was available. These results demonstrate the growth-lifespan trade-off. While growing more slowly can increase longevity, the optimal resolution of the growth-lifespan trade-off is influenced by time constraints in a seasonal environment.

The pattern of early growth trajectories affects adult breeding performance

Early environmental conditions can influence the pattern of growth and development. While poor conditions generally cause slower growth, normal adult size can still be reached if growth accelerates or is prolonged once conditions improve, but such catch-up growth may have deleterious effects later in life. Here we investigate for the first time how decelerating as well as accelerating growth trajectories, manipulated independently of food supply, affect subsequent breeding performance. In order to alter growth rates we subjected juvenile three-spined sticklebacks Gasterosteus aculeatus to a short period of altered environmental temperature (high, intermediate, or low), after which all fish had the same (intermediate) temperature regime. In addition, the perceived time stress (until the onset of the spawning season) was manipulated by conducting the experiment twice (in the winter and in the spring immediately prior to breeding) and by exposing half of the fish in each experiment to a delayed photoperiod (two months behind ambient). We found that fish showed full growth compensation, such that in all treatments they were of the same average size by the start of the breeding season. However, those compensating for low temperatures earlier in life (i.e., who then showed an accelerated growth trajectory) had reduced reproductive investment over the following two breeding seasons (males, reduced sexual ornaments and speed of building nests; females, reduced first clutch size, mean egg size, and eggs produced per year). Moreover, these deleterious effects were strongest when the perceived time available for growth compensation prior to breeding was shortest. In contrast, those fish with a decelerating growth trajectory as a result of exposure to high temperatures early in life showed an improved breeding performance compared to steadily growing controls. These results clearly demonstrate that both the shape of the growth trajectory (independent of food supply) and the time available for growth compensation have broad-reaching and prolonged effects on breeding performance, with ecological conditions that prompt catch-up growth just prior to the breeding season being especially damaging for both sexes.