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

基因决定了个体在发育过程中对环境条件的敏感度，这种环境敏感度会影响成年后产生的行为。这个项目试图了解基因和发育条件如何共同影响大脑，以及如何改变社会行为。这项计划中的研究利用了大量关于遗传和环境对孔雀鱼行为影响的信息，孔雀鱼是一种小鱼，已经进化出对捕食者的许多行为反应。在野外经历高水平和低水平捕食的孔雀将在实验室条件下饲养，在发育过程中有或没有暴露于捕食者。基因和分子实验将把大脑不同区域的基因表达模式与神经活动模式和由此产生的社会行为联系起来。结果将证明相似的行为特征(高度捕食地点的鱼和暴露于捕食者的鱼的社会性增加)在多大程度上依赖于相同的基因表达变化和大脑活动模式，或者类似的行为是否可能来自各种神经机制。这些发现还将揭示对环境条件的敏感性如何影响行为的演变。开发这一新的实验方法将为其他试图了解基因表达差异对行为影响的研究人员提供一个模型。PIS将把这项研究纳入本科课程，并将通过基因表达数据分析的年度研讨会培训研究生。孔雀鱼的简单性和可用性也使它们能够通过开发用于理解进化教学资源(http://evolution.berkeley.edu/).)的孔雀鱼模块来丰富K-12课程的进化和行为该项目将允许科罗拉多州立大学的研究人员扩展正在进行的项目，在该项目中，实验室人员与中学班级合作，设计和实施使用孔雀鱼的行为实验，以接触到更大的学生群体。

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.