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

SGER：使用便携式超声检查量化野外小动物的生活史特征和精力状态

• 批准号: 0426764
• 负责人: Blair Wolf
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of New Mexico
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2004
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2004-06-01 至 2006-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0426764&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SGER; Using; Portable; Ultrasonography; Quantify

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.

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入。许多研究人员还对量化小动物（如蜥蜴）腹部内离散脂肪体积累的能量储存感兴趣。传统上，这些特征的测量是破坏性的，方法是从种群中取出一些个体，并在安乐死后测量样本中的卵子大小、数量和脂肪质量。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，因为单个个体只能采样一次，这妨碍了在整个繁殖季节或跨年跟踪个体的繁殖表现。这项研究解决了我们如何准确测量同一动物在单个繁殖季节或动物一生中的繁殖努力的关键问题。该项目验证了便携式超声成像系统用于量化蜥蜴等小动物的繁殖努力和精力状态的用途。在该项目期间，将开发使用超声成像的方法来获得小动物的鸡蛋和脂肪体等小型结构的高度可重复的现场测量，并了解这些测量结果与这些结构的能量含量的相关性有多强。这项研究将让至少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。