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Noah Leith

@noahleith.bsky.social

724 followers 317 following 9 posts

Sexual selection - disease ecology - ecophysiology - global change NSF Postdoc Fellow at UC Berkeley 🏳️‍🌈(he/him) leith-ecology-evolution.com

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Noah Leith @noahleith.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

Finally, we found evidence that carryover effects on reproduction are mediated by sex-specific developmental plasticity in genital morphology. This plasticity affected selection on adult genitalia in the form of assortative mating by juvenile temperature, with cool implications for evolution!

Data figure with adult temperature on the x axis and mating likelihood on the y axis. Four panels show results when cool females are paired with cool males, hot females are paired with hot males, and intermediate combinations. Mating success is lowest when male and female developmental temperatures are mismatched

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Noah Leith @noahleith.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

We simulated population dynamics based on these effects of temperature at multiple life stages and on multiple fitness components. They showed that the thermal sensitivity of reproduction can offset the thermal sensitivity of survival. This indicates multiple paths to resilience in warming climates

Plots with adult temperature on the x axis, population growth rate on the y axis, with data in red indicating hotter developmental temperatures and in blue cooler developmental temperatures. The plots show that populations can have positive growth at hotter developmental temperatures (in red) even in the face of increased mortality

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Noah Leith @noahleith.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

Stress early in life can carry-over to affect adult fitness, but how “carryover effects” shape resilience to climate change is poorly understood. We combined years of experiments in #treehoppers showing that even though hotter temps are more lethal for juveniles, they're better for adult fertility

Data figures showing that hotter developmental temperatures reduce juvenile survival but affect adult sperm transfer and enhance fertility in treehoppers

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Noah Leith @noahleith.bsky.social · 15/03/2024

new paper out in Functional Ecology! We use treehoppers to show that even if insects can survive hot climates, they may still be vulnerable to climate change if thermoregulation doesn’t enhance MATING: besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

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