Collaborative Research: Evolutionary lability and adaptive plasticity in physiological and molecular mechanisms of behavior

合作研究：行为的生理和分子机制中的进化不稳定性和适应性可塑性

• 批准号: 1354755
• 负责人: Kim Hoke
• 金额: $ 62.5万
• 依托单位: Colorado State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-04-01 至 2019-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1354755&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Evolutionary; lability; adaptive

Genes shape how sensitive individuals are to environmental conditions during development, and this environmental sensitivity influences the behaviors produced in adulthood. This project seeks to understand how genes and developmental conditions together influence the brain, and how that alters social behaviors. The planned research takes advantage of extensive information on genetic and environmental influences on behavior of guppies, small fish that have evolved numerous behavioral responses to predators. Guppies that experience high and low levels of predation in the wild will be raised in laboratory conditions with and without predator exposure during development. Genetic and molecular experiments will link the patterns of gene expression in different brain regions to neural activity patterns and the resulting social behaviors. Results will demonstrate the extent to which similar behavioral traits (increased sociality in fish from high-predation sites and in fish exposed to predators) rely on the same gene expression changes and brain activity patterns, or whether similar behaviors may emerge from a variety of neural mechanisms. These findings will also reveal how sensitivity to environmental conditions shapes evolution of behavior. Developing this novel experimental approach will provide a model for other researchers seeking to understand the impacts of gene expression differences on behavior. The PIs will incorporate this research into undergraduate courses and will train graduate students via annual workshops on analysis of gene expression data. The simplicity and availability of guppies also make them amenable to enriching K-12 curricula in evolution and behavior, through development of a guppy module for for the Understanding Evolution resources for teaching evolution (http://evolution.berkeley.edu/). This project will allow the Colorado State University researchers to extend an ongoing program in which lab personnel work with middle school classes to design and implement behavioral experiments using guppies to reach a larger group of students.

基因塑造了个体在发育过程中对环境条件的敏感程度，而这种环境敏感性影响了成年后产生的行为。该项目试图了解基因和发展状况如何共同影响大脑，以及如何改变社会行为。计划的研究利用了有关遗传和环境对孔雀厂行为的影响的广泛信息，孔雀鱼的行为，这些小鱼已经进化出对捕食者的行为反应。在开发过程中有和没有捕食者暴露的实验室条件下，将在实验室条件下饲养经历高和低捕食水平的孔雀鱼。遗传和分子实验将把不同大脑区域的基因表达的模式与神经活动模式和由此产生的社会行为联系起来。结果将证明类似的行为特征（从高染色地点和暴露于捕食者的鱼类中的鱼类中的社会性增加）依赖相同的基因表达变化和大脑活动模式的程度，或者是否可能从多种神经机制中出现相似的行为。这些发现还将揭示对环境条件的敏感性如何塑造行为的演变。开发这种新颖的实验方法将为其他研究人员提供一个模型，以了解基因表达差异对行为的影响。 PI将将这项研究纳入本科课程中，并将通过年度关于基因表达数据的分析的研讨会来培训研究生。孔雀厂的简单性和可用性也使它们可以通过开发孔雀鱼模块来丰富K-12课程，从而在进化和行为上丰富，以了解教学进化的进化资源（http://evolution.berkeley.edu/）。该项目将使科罗拉多州立大学的研究人员能够扩展一项持续的计划，该计划在该计划中，实验室人员与中学课程合作，使用孔雀厂设计和实施行为实验，以吸引一群学生。