Intergenerational fitness effects of the early life environment in a wild rodent

The early life environment can have profound, long‐lasting effects on an individual's fitness. For example, early life quality might (a) positively associate with fitness (a silver spoon effect), (b) stimulate a predictive adaptive response (by adjusting the phenotype to the quality of the environment to maximize fitness) or (c) be obscured by subsequent plasticity. Potentially, the effects of the early life environment can persist beyond one generation, though the intergenerational plasticity on fitness traits of a subsequent generation is unclear. To study both intra‐ and intergenerational effects of the early life environment, we exposed a first generation of bank voles to two early life…