Maternal effect
Inducible defense can be transmitted to the next generation as a history
of predation. The degree of defensive traits in the daughter generation
of Daphnia cucullata depends on the extent to which the maternal
line was exposed to predation by Chaoborus larvae (Agrawal et al.
1999). D. pulex require exposure to kairomones during embryonic
and postembryonic development in order to allow adequate extension of
the head spine in the daughter generation (Miyakawa et al. 2010; Dennis
et al. 2014). However, not all plasticity traits are dependent on
maternal effects (Mikulski and Pjanowska 2017), and it is adaptive
because the next generation can express the defensive trait without the
cost of perceiving primary factors.