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，涉及到许多领域。人们对早期生命阶段知之甚少，特别是它们应对不同环境的能力。水生无脊椎动物在早期生命阶段非常小，这些微小的生物如何受到环境(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直观。随着动物的成长和发育，它们在物理和生理环境中经历了许多不同，并可以通过结构、生理和行为特征的变化做出反应，包括它们如何进食。以水中小颗粒为食的动物(悬浮摄食)，特别是双壳软体动物，提供重要的生态系统功能，是重要的渔业和水产养殖物种，是目前恢复和养护努力的目标。据预测，对于体型较小的个体，包括新变态的动物，悬浮喂养在能量上是无效的。本研究将结合生理学、形态学和流体力学来检验小型动物悬浮摄食效率的大小依赖关系，包括悬浮摄食性腹足类软体动物台阶虫的最小幼体个体作为模式动物。这些蜗牛在一生中可以使用两种不同的摄食机制，但可能会根据每种机制特定大小的相对效率而专门化。该项目将使用实验和建模来研究悬浮喂养的限度作为大小的函数，包括早期生命阶段的喂养和营养的后果，这可能会产生以后生活中所需的能量储存。它将研究悬浮摄食软体动物的早期生活史，以及小型悬浮摄食的潜在生理限制，并将对了解软体动物如何适应不断变化的环境具有重要意义。将对研究生和本科生进行培训，特别是女性和科学界代表性不足群体的成员，并将结果传达给普通公众、管理人员和政策制定者。

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.