The environmental conditions an individual experiences during early ontogeny may shape the life histories and behaviour of phenotypes irreversibly for the entire life time. Moreover early-environment effects can be transmitted between generations through maternal influences on propagule phenotype. Although the importance of early environment for life history evolution is increasingly acknowledged by the research fields as diverse as human medicine and evolutionary biology, we still do not know much about the possible adaptive value of these effects, nor do we understand the specific interactions of environmental characteristics and the type of effects they produce. Moreover, with few exceptions, we lack information about the precise physiological mechanism induced by the early-environment, and how they are linked to the observed variation of life history strategies of organisms. We aim to understand the evolution of early-environment effects by investigating the function and the underlying mechanisms of such effects using an integrative approach of theoretical modelling, lab experiments, ecological surveys and physiological measurements. The empirical research focuses on African cichlids, which are a suitable model system to study the life history evolution of iteroparous, long-lived vertebrates.
Specifically, we investigate the ecological or social context that favours or disfavours the evolution of early-environment effects on animal life histories and on social behaviour, we test for physiological and neural adaptations in response to early conditions and ask whether and for how long they are reversible, we test for adaptiveness of early-environment effects including maternal effects and we model how phenotypic plasticity of different traits changes over life time.