Sceloporus cort data

Stress experienced during ontogeny can have profound effects on the adult phenotype. However, stress can also be experienced intergenerationally, where an offspring’s phenotype can be moulded by stress experienced by the parents. Although early life and intergenerational stress can alter anatomy, physiology, and behavior, nothing is known about how these stress contexts interact to affect the neural phenotype. Here, we examined how early life and intergenerational stress affect the brain in eastern fence lizards (Sceloporus undulatus). Some lizard populations co-occur with predatory fire ants, and stress from fire ant attacks exerts intergenerational physiological and behavioral changes in lizards. However, it is unclear if intergenerational stress, or the interaction between intergenerational and early life stress, modulates the brain. To test this, we captured gravid females from fire ant invaded and uninvaded populations, and subjected offspring to three early life stress treatments: 1) fire ant attack, 2) corticosterone (CORT), or 3) a control. CORT and fire ant attacks downregulated some aspects of the neural phenotype while population of origin and the interaction of early life stress and population of origin had no effects on the brain. These results suggest that early life stressors may better predict adult brain variation than intergenerational stress.