Risk‐Avoiding Strategies in Rotifer Diapause‐Related Traits in Response to Environmental Unpredictability

Unpredictable environments often drive organisms to adopt risk‐avoiding strategies to secure fitness over time. Among life‐history traits, the timing of leaving dormancy is frequently studied; however, it requires careful examination, incorporating a multi‐component, non‐stationary and organism‐specific perception of environmental predictability. Here, we investigated the interplay of diapause‐related traits in Brachionus plicatilis , a cyclically parthenogenetic rotifer species, from natural populations inhabiting ponds that cover a gradient of predictability regarding hydrological conditions. By reanalysing the dataset published by Franch‐Gras and co‐workers in 2017 on diapause‐related traits from wild populations of this species in nine shallow, non‐permanent, brackish water bodies, we linked these traits to environmental parameters derived from Landsat 5 and 7 multispectral images. These non‐stationary parameters—average hydroperiod length, coefficient of variation of hydroperiod length and Colwell's index for predictability—were analysed to assess their influence on each diapause‐related trait. Our findings revealed that rotifers primarily respond to uncertainty by adopting conservative bet‐hedging strategies, ensuring the early production of diapausing eggs. Additionally, hatching‐related traits exhibit potential trade‐offs, responding to distinct components of environmental unpredictability, such as that occurring within and among growing seasons. This study underscores the importance of incorporating multiple components of predictability and their interactions when evaluating bet‐hedging strategies.