Understanding Growth and Developmental Responses of Ectotherms to Fluctuating Environments: Beyond Performance Curves

了解变温动物对波动环境的生长和发育反应：超越性能曲线

• 批准号: 1555959
• 负责人: Joel Kingsolver
• 金额: $ 68.09万
• 依托单位: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-02-15 至 2021-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1555959&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Understanding; Growth; Developmental; Responses; Ectotherms

Understanding how organisms respond and adapt to fluctuating environments is a major challenge for biologists. The responses of an organism to current environmental conditions can depend on conditions it experienced in the past, due to either stress (negative effects) or acclimation (positive effects). Biologists currently lack a framework for understanding and quantifying those effects: the goal of this project is to develop and test such a framework, using the growth responses of a model system, the Tobacco Hornworm (Manduca sexta), to variable temperatures. The research integrates physiological experiments, genomics analyses and mathematical models to predict the consequences of stress and acclimation on growth, development and survival, and to test these predictions for unpredictable temperature conditions. This new framework will allow a quantitative understanding of responses of Tobacco Hornworms and other agricultural pests to variability in weather; the general framework should be applicable to most other 'cold-blooded' animals. The project provides research training and experience for undergraduate and graduate students, and develops a new citizen science program for monitoring butterflies and moths in the piedmont region of North Carolina.During the course of a single lifespan, terrestrial ectotherms often experience wide variation in temperature and other environmental factors. An individual's performance can vary with temperature, represented as a thermal performance curve (TPC), and TPCs are the basis for many models predicting organismal responses to fluctuating temperatures. However, many ectotherms exhibit time-dependent effects, including stress responses and acclimation, where the duration and order of prior temperature exposure affect organismal performance; these effects are ignored in the standard TPC approach. The studies proposed here develop and test a new framework for incorporating time-dependent effects into models of ectotherm performance, using growth rate of Manduca sexta larvae in fluctuating temperatures as a model system. The proposed studies integrate physiological experiments, functional genomic and protein analyses, and mathematical models to develop and parameterize a systems modeling framework for stress and acclimation responses, and test predictions from this model in response to stochastic variation in diurnal temperature fluctuations. The proposed research will provide the bases for a new conceptual and modeling framework for understanding and predicting the effects of variation in temperature and climate on growth and fitness of ectotherms. The project provides research training and experience for undergraduate and graduate students, and develops a new citizen science program for monitoring butterflies and moths in the piedmont region of North Carolina.

对生物学家来说，了解生物体如何响应和适应变化的环境是一个重大挑战。有机体对当前环境条件的反应可能取决于它过去经历的条件，这是由于压力(负面影响)或适应(积极影响)。生物学家目前缺乏了解和量化这些影响的框架：该项目的目标是开发和测试这样一个框架，使用一个模型系统--烟草天牛(Manduca Sexta)--对可变温度的生长反应。这项研究整合了生理实验、基因组分析和数学模型，以预测压力和适应对生长、发育和生存的影响，并针对不可预测的温度条件测试这些预测。这一新的框架将使人们能够定量地了解烟草角虫和其他农业害虫对天气变化的反应；一般框架应该适用于大多数其他“冷血”动物。该项目为本科生和研究生提供研究培训和经验，并开发了一个新的公民科学项目，用于监测北卡罗来纳州皮埃蒙特地区的蝴蝶和飞蛾。在单个生命周期中，陆地外温虫经常经历温度和其他环境因素的广泛变化。一个人的表现可以随着温度的变化而变化，表现为热性能曲线(TPC)，而TPC是许多预测生物对温度波动反应的模型的基础。然而，许多外温动物表现出依赖于时间的效应，包括应激反应和驯化，其中先前温度暴露的持续时间和顺序影响生物体的表现；这些影响在标准的TPC方法中被忽略。本文提出的研究开发和测试了一个新的框架，用于将时间依赖效应纳入到外温动性能模型中，以变温条件下六分圆线虫幼虫的生长速率为模型系统。建议的研究整合了生理实验、功能基因组和蛋白质分析以及数学模型，以开发和参数化应激和适应反应的系统建模框架，并测试该模型对昼夜温度波动的随机变化的预测。这项拟议的研究将为理解和预测温度和气候变化对外温带生长和适合度的影响提供新的概念和建模框架的基础。该项目为本科生和研究生提供研究培训和经验，并开发了一个新的公民科学计划，用于监测北卡罗来纳州皮埃蒙特地区的蝴蝶和飞蛾。