TY - JOUR A1 - Joschinski, Jens A1 - Hovestadt, Thomas A1 - Krauss, Jochen T1 - Coping with shorter days: do phenology shifts constrain aphid fitness? JF - PeerJ N2 - Climate change can alter the phenology of organisms. It may thus lead seasonal organisms to face different day lengths than in the past, and the fitness consequences of these changes are as yet unclear. To study such effects, we used the pea aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum as a model organism, as it has obligately asexual clones which can be used to study day length effects without eliciting a seasonal response. We recorded life-history traits under short and long days, both with two realistic temperature cycles with means differing by 2 °C. In addition, we measured the population growth of aphids on their host plant Pisum sativum. We show that short days reduce fecundity and the length of the reproductive period of aphids. Nevertheless, this does not translate into differences at the population level because the observed fitness costs only become apparent late in the individual's life. As expected, warm temperature shortens the development time by 0.7 days/°C, leading to faster generation times. We found no interaction of temperature and day length. We conclude that day length changes cause only relatively mild costs, which may not decelerate the increase in pest status due to climate change. KW - Homoptera aphididae KW - clock reproduction ecology KW - phenotypic plasticity KW - phenology shifts KW - insect timing KW - physiological constraints KW - day length KW - circadian rhythms KW - Acyrthosiphon pisum KW - climate change Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-148382 VL - 3 IS - e1103 ER -