DOI: 10.5061/dryad.2n6h627
title: Data from: You can’t have it all: heritability and constraints of predator-induced developmental plasticity in a Neotropical treefrog

description: Many organisms have evolved phenotypic plasticity but examples of a
 heritable genetic basis or genetic constraints for plasticity across
 environments remain scarce. Tadpoles of the Neotropical treefrog
 Dendropsophus ebraccatus alter tail coloration and shape differently in
 response to fish or aquatic insect predators. To assess the genetic basis
 of plasticity we raised 1020 tadpoles from 17 maternal half-sib pairs (34
 unique families) individually with chemical cues of fish or aquatic
 insects, or with cue-free control water. We used Bayesian animal models to
 estimate narrow sense heritability of morphology and cross-trait genetic
 correlations in all three treatments, heritability of plasticity in
 response to each predator, and genetic correlations between responses to
 fish and insects. Families showed remarkably different responses to
 predators and heritability was often high (0.45–0.75), as was heritability
 of plasticity itself (0.42–0.62). We detected strong negative genetic
 correlations for responses to each predator (-0.45 and -0.59), providing
 clear evidence of a limit to plasticity. Most importantly, we show that
 prey genotypes are constrained in their capacity to respond to different
 types of predators, which likely maintains genetic variation for
 plasticity in a temporally and spatially variable landscape where there is
 no single adaptive peak.
description: TadPlastMorphological and tail color measurements for 969 Dendropsophus ebraccatus tadpoles raised in one of three predator treatments (fish cues, insect cues or no predator cues [control]). See ReadMe file for a description of the variables.READMEDescriptions of all data and code files in the data package.TadPlast_expt_setupA description of the physical layout of the experiment, as well as what ponds adult frogs were collected from and what tiem cohort tadpoles were included in.TadPlast.pedThe pedigree of all tadpoles in the experiment, indicating which tadpoles are related to which adult frogs.TadPlast.lmmsCode to analyze the effects of predator treatment on phenotypes produced by Dendropsophus ebraccatus tadpoles. Data are analyzed via linear mixed effects models.TadPlast.Model_SelectionCode to conduct 'animal models' to estimate sources of additive and non-additive genetic variation. Analyses are Bayesian mixed effects models run in the function MCMCglmm.TadPlast.adjusted_trait_meansCode to calculate estimated marginal means of different aspects of the phenotype of Dendropsophus ebraccatus tadpoles raised in one of three predator treatments for 10 days.TadPlast.bivariate_modelsCode to run bivariate animal models to calculate genetic correlations between different pairs of aspects of the phenotype of Dendropsophus ebraccatus tadpoles raised in one of three predator treatments for 10 days. The code runs a simple custom function which calculates every pairwise combination of 10 different aspects of the phenotype.TadPlast.resample_functionsCode to run bivariate animal models to calculate genetic correlations between the plastic response of families to either insect predation cues or fish predation cues. The code runs a custom function which 1) first randomly sample the degree of plasticity for a given trait, then 2) run the bivariate model to estimate heritability and genetic correlation of plasticity.TadPlast.RandomTadSampleCode to calculate the difference in average phenotypes between groups of related tadpoles (same mom, different dads) and unrelated tadpoles (different moms and dads).