PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Gavin C. Woodruff AU - Erik Johnson AU - Patrick C. Phillips TI - A large close relative of <em>C. elegans</em> is slow-developing but not long-lived AID - 10.1101/426254 DP - 2018 Jan 01 TA - bioRxiv PG - 426254 4099 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/09/25/426254.short 4100 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/09/25/426254.full AB - Background Variation in body size is thought to be a major driver of a wide variety of ecological and evolutionary patterns, including changes in development, reproduction, and longevity. Caenorhabditis inopinata is a recently-discovered fig-associated nematode that is unusually large relative to other members of the genus, including the closely related model system C. elegans. Here we test whether the dramatic increase in body size has led to correlated changes in key life history and developmental parameters within this species.Results Using four developmental milestones, C. inopinata was found to have a slower rate of development than C. elegans across a range of temperatures. Despite this, C. inopinata did not reveal any differences in adult lifespan from C. elegans after accounting for differences in developmental timing and reproductive mode. C. inopinata fecundity was generally lower than that of C. elegans, but fitness improved under continuous-mating, consistent with sperm-limitation under gonochoristic (male/female) reproduction. C. inopinata also revealed greater fecundity and viability at higher temperatures.Conclusion Consistent with observations in other ectotherms, slower growth in C. inopinata indicates a potential trade-off between body size and developmental timing, whereas its unchanged lifespan suggests that longevity is largely uncoupled from its increase in body size. Additionally, temperature-dependent patterns of fitness in C. inopinata are consistent with its geographic origins in subtropical Okinawa. Overall, these results underscore the extent to which changes in ecological context and body size can shape life history traits.