Indirect Genetic Effects of Parental Care Behavior

亲代抚育行为的间接遗传效应大量研究表明，亲代抚育可以影响后代性状的表达。从后代的角度来看，亲代养育是一种环境因素，比如食物或空气温度。然而，对父母来说，亲代关爱和其他特质一样；这是由父母的基因和父母所处的环境决定的。亲本基因和亲本环境通过对后代环境的影响，可以影响后代的生长发育时间等性状。亲本基因和环境对后代性状表达的影响分别称为间接遗传效应和间接环境效应。由于间接遗传效应可以影响性状对自然选择的反应速率和方向，因此，人们对间接遗传效应特别感兴趣。本研究将探讨亲代抚育对性状进化的影响。具体目标是：1)确定在亲代抚育的昆虫物种中由于间接遗传效应而导致的后代性状变异量；2)调查间接遗传效应的影响是否取决于性状表达的发育阶段，正如在许多哺乳动物中观察到的那样；3)检查在亲代抚育和非亲代抚育下饲养的个体中间接遗传效应的相对影响。这项研究的结果将大大增加我们对亲代抚育动物特征进化的理解。将有亲代照顾的昆虫与哺乳动物和鸟类进行比较，将使我们了解包括亲代影响在内的进化模型的普遍性。这些模型主要是根据对家养哺乳动物的观察建立起来的。在有亲代抚育和没有亲代抚育的动物中，对亲代抚育如何影响性状进化进行比较，将提供宝贵的信息。

Indirect Genetic Effects of Parental Care BehaviorClaudia M. Rauter and Charles W. FoxNumerous studies have shown that parental care can affect expression of traits in offspring. From the point of view of offspring, parental care is an environmental factor like food or air temperature. For the parents, however, parental care is a trait like any other trait; it is determined by parental genes and the environment to which the parent is exposed. Through their effects on the offspring environment, both parental genes and the parental environment can affect offspring traits such as growth and developmental time. These effects of parental genes and environment on trait expression in offspring are called indirect genetic effects and indirect environmental effects, respectively. The indirect genetic effects are of special interest, because they can influence rate and direction of response of traits to natural selection.This study will investigate how parental care affects trait evolution. The specific objectives are to 1) determine the amount of variation in progeny traits that is due to indirect genetic effects in an insect species with parental care, 2) investigate whether the influence of indirect genetic effects depends on the developmental stage in which the trait is expressed as has been observed in many mammals, and 3) examine the relative influence of indirect genetic effects in individuals reared with and without parental care.The results of this research will significantly increase our understanding of trait evolution in animals with parental care. The comparison between an insect with parental care with mammals and birds will give us insights about the generality of the evolutionary models including parental effects. These models have been developed primarily based on observations in domesticated mammals. The comparison of parental effects in animals reared with and without parental care will provide invaluable information about how parental care affects trait evolution.