Regulation of Body Mass and Stored Food

体重和储存食物的调节

• 批准号: 9222313
• 负责人: Jeffrey Lucas
• 金额: $ 12万
• 依托单位: Purdue Research Foundation
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1993
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1993-08-01 至 1996-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9222313&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Regulation; Body; Mass; Stored; Food

Lucas 9222313 An important focus in the study of the functional significance of behavior has been the impact of physiological state on the expression of foraging decisions. In the past, experimenters have imposed changes in hunger and mass on an animal and have monitored the resulting changes in behavior. However, behavioral systems involve a feedback loop, because foraging decisions themselves will influence further changes in physiological state. Dr. Lucas's research will be one of the first attempts to evaluate the entire feedback loop for a caching animal. Food-caching behavior has often been seen as one mechanism that permits small animals to live through energetically stressful periods, notably winter. Dr. Lucas has found that certain conditions actually retard the storage of food by chickadees, and this in turn reduced the ability of these birds to maintain sufficient body mass to survive when food was scarce. The current reseearch is designed to study conditions that affect the storage of energy, both in the form of body mass and food stores. Energy-storage tactics will in turn affect the ability of birds faced with resource shortfall to alter their behavior in order to improve their chances of survival. Because Dr. Lucas will be studying regulation of body mass as well as food hoards, his results will be broadly applicable to understanding regulation of energy and body mass in any species, including humans.

生理状态对觅食决策表达的影响一直是研究行为功能意义的一个重要焦点。在过去，实验人员对动物施加饥饿感和体重的变化，并监测由此产生的行为变化。然而，行为系统涉及一个反馈回路，因为觅食决策本身会影响生理状态的进一步变化。卢卡斯博士的研究将是首次尝试评估贮藏动物的整个反馈回路。食物贮藏行为通常被视为一种机制，使小动物能够度过能量紧张的时期，尤其是冬天。卢卡斯博士发现，某些条件实际上阻碍了山雀储存食物，这反过来又降低了这些鸟类在食物匮乏时保持足够体重的能力。目前的研究旨在研究影响能量储存的条件，包括身体质量和食物储存。能量储存策略将反过来影响鸟类在面临资源短缺时改变其行为的能力，以提高其生存机会。由于卢卡斯博士将研究体重和食物储备的调节，他的研究结果将广泛适用于理解包括人类在内的任何物种的能量和体重调节。