Increased offspring provisioning by large female fish and consequences for reproductive efficiency

Contemporary fisheries research and management have highlighted the need to protect size and age structures of fish populations. Many studies particularly emphasize a disproportionate contribution of populations' largest, oldest female fish to population‐level recruitment through maternal effects: non‐genetic effects of females on performance of their offspring including through energetic provisioning of eggs. Our study synthesized the effects of increasing female size on offspring performance using a meta‐analysis approach. In a stepwise fashion, we conducted three separate meta‐analyses to estimate the broad‐scale patterns of maternal effects in fish. We synthesized relationships between female size and egg size, egg size and offspring size, and egg size and offspring survival. We tested maternal effects across numerous taxonomic orders and system types including freshwater, diadromous, and saltwater species. We also compared the effects of increasing egg size on offspring performance at different experimental durations. These three meta‐analyses all supported the paradigm that larger females render individual benefits to offspring performance. However, females have finite gonadal energy and space for egg provisioning and must trade off between egg size and fecundity. For the largest females to contribute disproportionately to population recruitment (relative to their gonadal investment), they must utilize their gonadal investment more efficiently than their smaller conspecifics. Using example studies in published literature, we demonstrated how established maternal effects on egg provisioning do not necessarily support greater reproductive efficiency in larger females. Therefore, while larger females do produce larger eggs, which promote offspring growth and survival, we concluded these benefits may not always outweigh relative fecundity costs of larger eggs.