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.