Prolonged diapause has sex-specific fertility and fitness costs

Diapause in seasonal environments allows insects to survive adverse seasons. However, individuals can sometimes enter a prolonged diapause for more than a year, and also skip favourable seasons, which can bring additional costs through e.g. loss of metabolic resources. At the same time, prolonged diapause can be beneficial if it allows individuals to have a risk-spreading strategy to skip potentially suboptimal breeding seasons. We studied if prolonged diapause (2-year diapause) negatively affects the fertility and fitness of female and male Colorado potato beetles (Leptinotarsa decemlineata) compared to control (1-year diapause) beetles. We also tested the parental effects on the subsequent chemical stress tolerance of their offspring. We found that prolonged diapause carried fertility costs only for females who were less fertile than the control females. However, no differences in fertility were observed in males. Furthermore, prolonged diapause in females resulted in offspring with lower larvae-to-adult survival even though these offspring had accelerated development times. In contrast, paternal diapause duration had no effects on their offspring larvae-to adult survival, but prolonged diapause males sired offspring with slower development times than control males. Perhaps to compensate the costs related to prolonged diapause both older parents produced or sired offspring with higher body mass than control parents. Despite the differences in emergence mass, parental diapause duration did not affect offspring insecticide stress tolerance. The difference between females and males most likely results from the observed differences in prolonged diapause females’ capacity to fight against cellular oxidative damage which was poorer compared to the control females. Even though prolonged diapause allows individuals to have a risk-spreading strategy it carries sex-specific fertility and fitness costs indicating that selection could favour this in males but not in females.