DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Flexible stem and parental effects: synthesizing and applying two models of rapid evolution to the threespine stickleback radiation

这些研究的目的是以三刺鱼为模型，了解育儿行为的灵活性以及育儿对后代行为和生理的影响(父母效应)如何影响进化模式。三刺鱼起源于海洋环境，曾多次在淡水中定居。在某些情况下，淡水种群的确切年龄是已知的，这不仅提供了一个独特的机会，不仅可以研究父母照料的差异如何在多种环境中影响后代的机制，而且还可以检查这些变化发生的速度。当前的生态系统和生境正在随着气候和人为的影响而迅速变化，拟议的一系列研究提供了一个机会来观察父母的行为和父母的影响如何促进快速的适应性进化。虽然许多关于父母影响的研究，包括对人类的影响，都集中在母亲对后代的影响上，但在三刺鱼中，父亲是父母照顾的唯一提供者。因此，这些研究将提供对父亲如何影响子女的洞察，并将确定母亲和父亲对子女的影响是相似还是不同。

These studies aim to understand how flexibility in parenting behavior and effects of parenting on offspring behavior and physiology (parental effects) influence evolutionary patterns using the threespine stickleback fish as a model. Threespine stickleback originated in marine environments and have colonized freshwater multiple times. In some cases, the exact age of freshwater populations is known, providing a unique opportunity to study not only the mechanisms underlying how variation in parental care influences offspring in multiple environments, but also examination of the speed at which these changes are occurring. Current ecosystems and habitats are rapidly changing in response to climatic and anthropogenic influences, and the proposed series of studies provides an opportunity to observe how parental behavior and parental effects facilitate rapid, adaptive evolution. While many studies of parental effects, including on humans, focus on the effects that mothers have on their offspring, in threespine stickleback, the father is the sole provider of parental care. Therefore these studies will provide insight into how fathers influence their offspring, and will determine whether the influence of mothers and fathers on offspring is similar or different.