Laboratory studies on embryos of salmonids, such as the brown trout (Salmo trutta), have been extensively used to study environmental stress and how responses vary within and between natural populations. These studies are based on the implicit assumption that early life‐history traits are relevant for stress tolerance in the wild. Here we test this assumption by combining two data sets from studies on the same 60 families. These families had been experimentally produced from wild breeders to determine, in separate samples, (1) stress tolerances of singly kept embryos in the laboratory and (2) growth of juveniles during 6 months in the wild. We found that growth in the wild was well predicted by the larval size of their full sibs in the laboratory, especially if these siblings had been experimentally exposed to a pathogen. Exposure to the pathogen had not caused elevated mortality among the embryos but induced early hatching. The strength of this stress‐induced change of life history was a significant predictor of juvenile growth in the wild: the stronger the response in the laboratory, the slower the growth in the wild. We conclude that embryo performance in controlled environments can be a useful predictor of juvenile performance in the wild.

中文翻译：

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通过实验室胚胎应激反应预测褐鳟在野外的生长


对褐鳟（Salmo trutta）等鲑鱼胚胎的实验室研究已被广泛用于研究环境压力以及自然种群内部和之间的反应如何变化。这些研究基于一个隐含的假设，即早期生活史特征与野外的应激耐受性相关。在这里，我们通过结合来自相同 60 个家庭的研究的两个数据集来检验这一假设。这些家族是由野生饲养者通过实验产生的，目的是在单独的样本中确定 (1) 实验室中单独保存的胚胎的应激耐受性和 (2) 幼体在野外 6 个月期间的生长情况。我们发现，在实验室中，通过其全同胞的幼虫大小可以很好地预测野生环境的生长，特别是如果这些兄弟姐妹已经在实验中暴露于病原体。接触病原体并没有导致胚胎死亡率升高，但会导致早期孵化。这种压力引起的生活史变化的强度是野生幼体生长的重要预测因素：实验室中的反应越强，野外生长就越慢。我们得出的结论是，受控环境中的胚胎表现可以作为野生幼体表现的有用预测指标。