Collaborative Research: Phenotypic Plasticity in Feeding: Ontogenetic Solutions to Scaling Limitations

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。了解动物如何适应环境变化是一个重要的问题，对许多领域都有影响。人们对生命早期阶段知之甚少，尤其是它们应对不同环境的能力。水生无脊椎动物在生命的早期阶段非常小，这些微小的有机体如何受到其环境（水）的物理特性的影响，或者它们如何对这种环境做出反应，并不是直观的。随着动物的生长和发育，它们在生理和生理环境中经历了许多差异，并可以通过结构、生理和行为特征的变化来做出反应，包括它们如何进食。以水中小颗粒为食的动物（悬浮进食），特别是双壳类软体动物，具有重要的生态系统功能，是重要的渔业和水产养殖物种，是当前恢复和保护工作的目标。据预测，悬浮进食对小型个体（包括新变形的动物）来说是能量效率低下的。本研究将结合生理学、形态学和流体动力学来研究小动物悬浮摄食效率的大小依赖性，包括作为模型动物的腹足类软体动物Crepidula fornicata的最小幼个体。这些蜗牛一生中可以使用两种不同的进食机制，但可能会根据每种机制的特定尺寸的相对效率而进行专业化。该项目将通过实验和建模来检验悬浮摄食的极限与大小的关系，包括生命早期摄食和营养的后果，这可以产生生命后期所需的能量储存。它将研究悬浮摄食软体动物的早期生活史，以及小体积悬浮摄食的潜在生理限制，并将对理解软体动物如何适应不断变化的环境产生影响。将培训研究生和本科生，特别是妇女和科学界代表性不足的群体成员，并将结果传达给公众、管理人员和决策者。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).Understanding how animals adapt to environmental changes is an important question, and has implications for many fields. Little is known about early life stages, especially their ability to deal with different environments. Aquatic invertebrate animals are very small at early life stages, and how these tiny organisms are affected by physical properties of their environment (water), or how they respond to this environment are not intuitive. As animals grow and develop they experience many differences in their physical and physiological environments and can respond through changes in structural, physiological and behavioral traits, including how they feed. Animals that feed on small particles in the water (suspension-feeding), especially bivalve molluscs, provide important ecosystem functions, are important fisheries and aquaculture species, and are the current target of restoration and conservation efforts. Suspension-feeding has been predicted to be energetically inefficient for small sized individuals, including newly metamorphosed animals. This research will integrate physiology, morphology and hydrodynamics to examine size dependence of suspension-feeding efficiency for small animals, including the smallest juvenile individuals of the suspension-feeding gastropod mollusc Crepidula fornicata, as a model animal. These snails can use two different feeding mechanisms throughout their life, but may specialize depending upon the size-specific relative efficiencies of each of mechanism. This project will use experimentation and modeling to examine limits of suspension feeding as a function of size, including consequences of feeding and nutrition at early life stages, which can produce energy stores needed later in life. It will examine the early life history of suspension-feeding molluscs, and potential physiological limits to suspension feeding at a small size, and will have implications for understanding how molluscs adjust to changing environments. Graduate and undergraduate students will be trained, especially women and members of groups under-represented in science, and results communicated to the general public, managers, and policy makers.