Editing Maternal effect (section)

===Parental diet affects offspring immunity===
A [[Pyralidae|pyralid moth species]], ''[[Plodia interpunctella]]'', commonly found in food storage areas, exhibits maternal dietary effects, as well as paternal dietary effects, on its offspring. Epigenetic changes in moth offspring affect the production of phenoloxidase, an enzyme involved with melanization and correlated with resistance of certain pathogens in many invertebrate species. In this study, parent moths were housed in food rich or food poor environments during their reproductive period. Moths who were housed in food poor environments produced offspring with less phenoloxidase, and thus had a weaker immune system, than moths who reproduced in food rich environments. This is believed to be adaptive because the offspring develop while receiving cues of scarce nutritional opportunities. These cues allow the moth to allocate energy differentially, decreasing energy allocated for the immune system and devoting more energy towards growth and reproduction to increase fitness and insure future generations. One explanation for this effect may be imprinting, the expression of only one parental gene over the other, but further research has yet to be done.<ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Vargas G, Michaud JP, Nechols JR, Moreno CA |title=Age-specific maternal effects interact with larval food supply to modulate life history in Coleomegilla maculata |journal=Ecological Entomology |volume=39 |issue=1 |year=2014 |pages=39–46 |doi=10.1111/een.12065 |bibcode=2014EcoEn..39...39V |s2cid=54585960 |hdl=2097/17235 |hdl-access=free }}</ref>

Parental-mediated dietary epigenetic effects on immunity has a broader significance on wild organisms. Changes in immunity throughout an entire population may make the population more susceptible to an environmental disturbance, such as the introduction of a pathogen. Therefore, these transgenerational epigenetic effects can influence the population dynamics by decreasing the stability of populations who inhabit environments different from the parental environment that offspring are epigenetically modified for.