SGER: Using Portable Ultrasonography to Quantify Life History Traits and Energetic Status of Small Animals in the Field

研究动物进化生态学和生态能量学的生物学家通常希望量化生活在不同环境条件下的动物的繁殖时间和能量投资。许多研究人员也对量化能量储存感兴趣，这些能量储存是作为小动物（如蜥蜴）的脂肪体内所含的离散脂肪体积累的。传统上，这些特征已经通过从种群中移除一些个体并在它们被安乐死后测量样本中的卵大小、数量和脂肪体质量来破坏性地测量。目前的方法限制了我们理解动物进化生态学和能量学的能力，因为单个个体只能被采样一次，这阻止了通过繁殖季节或跨年跟踪个体的繁殖性能。这项研究解决了一个关键问题，即我们如何准确地测量同一动物在一个生殖季节或动物一生中的生殖努力。该项目验证了便携式超声成像系统的使用，以量化小动物（如蜥蜴）的生殖努力和精力充沛的状态。在该项目中，将开发使用超声成像的方法，以获得小动物的卵和脂肪体等小结构的高度可重复的现场测量，并了解这些测量与这些结构的能量含量的相关性。这项研究将至少有一名本科生参与研究企业，从研究设计和实施到数据收集，综合和演示。

Biologists that study animal evolutionary ecology and ecological energetics often want to quantify the timing of reproduction and the energetic investment made by animals living under varying environmental conditions. Many researchers are also interested in quantifying the energy stores that are accumulated as discrete fat bodies contained within the abdomens of small animals such as lizards. Traditionally, these characteristics have been measured destructively by removing a number of individuals from a population and measuring egg size, number, and fat body mass in specimens after they have been euthanized. The current methodologies place limits on our ability to understand animal evolutionary ecology and energetics because a single individual can only be sampled once, which prevents following the reproductive performance of individuals through a reproductive season or across years. This research addresses the critical issue of how can we accurately measure the same animal's reproductive effort over the course of a single reproductive season or the animal's lifetime. This project validates the use of portable ultrasound imaging systems for quantifying the reproductive effort and energetic status of small animals such as lizards. During this project, the methodology will be developed for using ultrasound imaging to obtain highly repeatable field measurements of small structures such as eggs and fat bodies in small animals and see how strongly these measurements can be correlated with the energy content of these structures. This study will engage at least one undergraduate student in the research enterprise from study design and implementation through data collection, synthesis and presentation.