Temperature strongly impacts insect development, but plasticity of adult reproductive behaviors can alter the temperatures experienced by earlier life stages. To date, few studies have tested whether adult behavioral plasticity can buffer offspring from the warmer and more variable temperatures associated with climate change. Here I discuss laboratory experiments and field manipulations in which my lab has examined whether the adults of several dung beetle species modify their breeding behaviors in response to increases in temperature mean and variance and whether these behavioral shifts can protect earlier life stages from temperature changes. Tunneling dung beetles lay eggs inside brood balls constructed of dung that are buried underground. The depth of the brood ball affects the temperatures that the offspring experience and, thus, offspring development. Based on lab and field studies, all species buried brood balls deeper in the soil in response to warmer and more variable temperatures, but for some species, the greater burial depth came at a cost to brood ball size and/or number, which can impact fitness. Despite greater burial depths, offspring in brood balls in the heated treatments still experienced warmer mean temperatures, which had a large, negative effect on offspring survival of the species with the smallest body size. These findings suggest behavioral plasticity of adults could partially protect developing offspring from temperature shifts linked to climate change.
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