Trade-offs: effects of nutrition, sex-specific selection and non-genetic inheritance

Trade-offs are thought to be ubiquitous, come in different types, and have been at the heart of evolutionary biology, especially life-history theory.

Whether phenotypic or genetic, whether based on trait pairs or on a large number of traits or genes, the intuitive understanding of trade-offs might have often been too simplistic. This led to a dynamic field of research that often seems torn between having to elucidate some of the classic questions, for example whether there is a trade-off between reproduction and survival, and how it could affect evolutionary trajectories, and between newer methods, such as sequencing and gene editing. In this talk, I will highlight some fundamental questions on the effects of nutrition and sex-specific selection on the evolution of trade-offs that I have worked on. These case studies will span from empirical work on flies, to theoretical models. I will further discuss the potential of non-genetic transgenerational inheritance as a fairly new player in this line of research.