Parental effects on offspring morphology, development, and population dynamics have been shown for
other species (Hunter and McNeil 2000). Temperature and photoperiod are considered to be key variables responsible for parental inßuence on resulting
offspring life histories (Hunter and McNeil 2000).
Accordingly, our colony was maintained in a greenhouse, and these same variables could be responsible
for the signiÞcant differences across generation observed in our study. Many studies, however, do not
replicate over time to encompass multiple generations, representing a signiÞcant loss of variability. Although replicates in our study were reared under
identical conditions, the parents of these ßies were
housed in an outdoor greenhouse where they experienced light cycles and temperature regimens reßective of seasonality in northcentral Texas.