Dissertation Research: Parent-embryo Interactions in Glassfrogs - Female Mating Strategies, Paternal Effort, and Adaptive Plasticity in Hatching

行为生态学的一个基本目标是了解相关个体之间的共同利益和冲突如何塑造家庭生活。后代受益于越来越多的父母照顾，但父母照顾幼崽的能力受到未来繁殖和生存所需资源的限制。这种冲突被认为有利于让个人在育儿成本和收益之间取得平衡的策略。关于这一主题的研究通常集中在具有传统性别角色的物种上，在这些物种中，雌性照顾幼崽。在玻璃蛙中，雄性会照顾蛋，胚胎可以很早孵化出来，以躲避被遗弃的蛋。这个项目将通过评估生态上重要的父系和胚胎性状的遗传力和变异来评估关于父亲胚胎共同进化的假说。它将测试雌性是否有策略地选择好的父亲或配偶来引导良好的父母教养，以及父母之间的互动如何影响胚胎孵化策略的进化。该项目将通过测试性选择如何影响父亲和胚胎的行为，为家庭生活提供新的视角。玻璃蛙家庭互动对科学教育和公众宣传具有很大的吸引力。PIS将与媒体、博物馆和动物园合作，广泛传播结果。该项目将为一名研究生和一名本科生助理提供基因组学、行为生态学和数量遗传学综合方法的培训，并促进与拉丁美洲研究人员的合作。这项研究使用孵化过程中的适应性可塑性来检查在雄性照看卵的玻璃蛙中父母后代的相互作用及其后果。在共生透明叶蝉中，较高的交配成功率会导致更多的父性努力，更长的胚胎期和更高的后代存活率。该团队将使用下一代逐个基因测序的方法进行生育分析，结合男性交配和关怀行为的详细历史，在社会环境的背景下评估女性的交配选择。具体地说，他们将测试雌性是否在战术上交配，以利用雄性照顾，并评估与雌性共同筑巢的潜在互惠互利。该团队将通过评估在田间实验中测量的父系性状之间的协变性，以及在共同花园实验中测量的胚胎孵化反应，来检验父亲胚胎共同进化的假说。这项研究将亲子互动的基本测试扩展到只照顾男性的系统，并将为其他关于父母和胚胎策略的研究提供信息和激励。数据将酌情在出版物的在线增刊或公共档案馆(Dryad，Sequence Read Archive，GenBank)中共享。宣传材料将张贴在网上。

A fundamental goal of behavioral ecology is to understand how shared interests and conflicts among related individuals shape family life. Offspring benefit from increasing parental care, but parents' ability to care for young is limited by resources needed for future reproduction and survival. This conflict is thought to favor strategies that allow individuals to balance the costs and benefits of parenting. Research on this topic has typically focused on species with conventional sex roles where females care for young. In glassfrogs, males care for eggs and embryos can hatch early to escape from abandoned eggs. This project will evaluate hypotheses about father embryo co-evolution by assessing heritability and variation in ecologically important paternal and embryonic traits. It will test if females select good fathers or mate strategically to induce good parenting and how interactions between parents affect the evolution of embryos' hatching strategies. This project will offer new perspectives on family life by testing how sexual selection influences the behavior of fathers and embryos. Glassfrog family interactions have substantial appeal for scientific education and public outreach. The PIs will work with the media, museums, and zoos to disseminate results broadly. This project will offer training in integrative methods of genomics, behavioral ecology, and quantitative genetics for a graduate student and an undergraduate assistant and foster collaborations with Latin American researchers. This research uses adaptive plasticity in hatching to examine parent offspring interactions and their consequences in a glassfrog with male care of eggs. In Hyalinobatrachium colymbiphyllum, higher mating success results in more paternal effort, longer embryonic periods, and higher offspring survival. The team will use a next-generation genotype-by-sequencing method for maternity analysis, in combination with detailed histories of male mating and caring behavior, to assess female mating choices in the context of social environments. Specifically, they will test whether females mate tactically to exploit male care and assess potential mutual benefits to co-nesting females. The team will test hypotheses of father embryo co-evolution by assessing covariation between paternal traits, measured in a field experiment, and hatching responses of their embryos, measured in a common-garden experiment. This study extends fundamental tests of parent offspring interactions to a system with male-only care, and will inform and motivate other research on parental and embryo strategies. Data will be shared in online supplements to publications or in public archives (DRYAD, the Sequence Read Archive, GenBank) as appropriate. Outreach materials will be posted online.