The Expression and Impact of Parent-offspring Conflict in Natural Populations of Least Killifish

当母亲在整个怀孕期间为后代提供营养时，后代和母亲会产生利益冲突。母亲应该将营养平均分配给所有的后代，但每个后代都应该为自己争取尽可能多的营养。这个项目将研究不同程度的冲突，是否由母亲内部不同程度的亲缘关系产生？在自然界中，母体对后代的投入水平存在巨大差异，不同种群在妊娠期间的基因表达模式也存在差异。该项目还将研究是否可以通过提高母亲的营养来改善这种冲突，以及这种冲突是否可以解释在不同种群的个体之间的杂交中观察到的大量不可存活的胚胎。母亲和后代之间的利益冲突被认为是哺乳动物胎盘、遗传印记和活胎动物快速多样化等特征的原因。这个项目将在同一个系统中解决这些假设的联系，从而阐明一个过程是否可以为自然界中许多看似不同的特征提供统一的解释。它还将为高中生、教师、本科生和博士后提供培训机会，包括在科学领域代表性不足的群体。

When mothers provide nutrition for offspring throughout gestation, offspring and mother have conflicting interests. Mothers ought to distribute nutrition evenly to all offspring, but each offspring ought to coerce as much nutrition as possible for itself. This project will examine whether different levels of conflict, produced by different levels of relatedness within a mother?s brood, can account for the vastly different levels of maternal investment in offspring seen in nature and for different patterns of gene expression during gestation in different populations. The project will also examine whether this conflict can be ameliorated by enhancing the nutrition available to mothers, and whether this conflict accounts for the high number of inviable embryos observed in crosses between individuals from different populations.The conflicting interests of mothers and offspring are postulated to be responsible for features such as the mammalian placenta, genetic imprinting, and the rapid diversification of live-bearing animals. This project will address several of these postulated connections in the same system and thereby illuminate whether one process can offer a unifying explanation for many seemingly disparate features in nature. It will also provide training opportunities for high schoolers, teachers, undergraduates, and a postdoctoral fellow, including groups under-represented in science.