evolution of parent

ticity and the al effects xford, Oxford OX1 3PS, UK there has been a rapid accumulation of studies since a the optimal level of plasticity will differ for parents and Reviewlandmark publication 10 years ago [7]. This book has been instrumental for the general acceptance of parental (in particular maternal) effects as an important factor in evolution. However, many limitations to our understand-ing of evolution of parental effects still remain. For example, whereas theoretical work has focused on the consequences of parental effects for the short-term response of traits to selection [8–11], empirical studies tend mainly to be concerned with whether or not parental effects are adaptive [7,12–14]. Thus, it remains unclear under what circumstances parental effects are selected for, Glossary Development: phenotypic change during the lifetime of an individual. Developmental plasticity: the ability of a genotype to give rise to multiple phenotypes in different environments. Epigenetic inheritance: according to the broad definition, epigenetic inheri-tance means transgenerational transmission of form by other means than DNA. According to the narrow definition it implies heritable variation in DNA expression or activity, for example via persistent DNA methylation. Parent–offspring conflict: evolutionary conflict arising from different fitness optima in parents and offspring. Parental effect: an effect of the parental phenotype on offspring phenotype that cannot solely be ascribed to the parental or offspring genome, non-parental components of the environment or the interaction between these. Phenotypic plasticity: synonymous with developmental plasticity