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经常想要量化在不同环境条件下生活的动物的繁殖时机和所做的能量投资。许多研究人员还对量化储存的能量感兴趣，这些能量储存是作为包含在蜥蜴等小动物腹部的离散脂肪体而积累的。传统上，这些特征的测量是破坏性的，方法是从种群中移走一些个体，并在安乐死后测量样本中的鸡蛋大小、数量和脂肪体质量。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，这阻止了在整个生殖季节或跨年跟踪个体的生殖表现。这项研究解决了一个关键问题，即我们如何才能准确地测量同一动物在一个生殖季节或动物一生中的繁殖努力。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使用。在这个项目中，将开发一种方法，利用超声波成像对小动物的鸡蛋和脂肪体等微小结构进行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之间的相关性有多强。这项研究将从研究设计和实施到数据收集、综合和展示，在研究企业中至少招募一名本科生。

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.