DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Hormonal Regulation of Feather Color Development and Variation across Populations

论文研究：不同种群羽毛颜色发展和变化的荷尔蒙调节

• 批准号: 1601386
• 负责人: Ellen Ketterson
• 金额: $ 1.43万
• 依托单位: Indiana University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-04-15 至 2018-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1601386&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: DISSERTATION; RESEARCH; Hormonal; Regulation; Feather

Bird feathers are one of the most striking examples of diversity on the planet. The color and shape of feathers are of fundamental importance in bird courtship rituals, camouflage, and other social and ecological interactions. Feathers can evolve rapidly - populations of the same species often show striking differences in feather color and patterns. The mechanisms that are responsible for these differences, however, are poorly understood. Abolins-Abols investigates how and why feather color differs between individuals and populations. In this dissertation improvement project Abolins-Abols will investigate the hormonal mechanisms that regulate the development of two rapidly evolving feather traits - head and tail color - across multiple populations of the Dark-eyed Junco, a small songbird that is a common visitor to feeders across the United States. This research will increase our understanding of the evolution of bird color diversity, because head and tail feathers are hotspots for variation across songbirds. This project will also train undergraduate students and facilitate outreach to the general public using the newly founded bird banding station where Abolins-Abols will characterize color variation across a variety of migratory bird species. The affordability and simplicity of this study system make it a prime candidate for future research programs in development and evolution, especially at smaller institutions such as liberal arts colleges.Some feather ornaments are used as honest signals, suggesting that their development is integrated with other phenotypic traits such as behavior. A candidate mechanism for this integration is hormones, which regulate both neural and peripheral processes. While hormones have been shown to mediate sex differences coloration, we do not yet understand the role of hormones in mediating individual differences and population divergence in feather color. Abolins-Abols proposes to investigate the genetic and hormonal mechanisms that mediate the development of two rapidly evolving social plumage ornaments - head and tail color in Dark-eyed Juncos - across populations of varying coloration. These honest feather ornaments have been shown to be related to individual differences in testosterone physiology, suggesting a causal link between hormones and feather color. To gain an explicit understanding of whether and how hormones regulate this variation, Abolins-Abols will analyze hormone receptor gene and protein expression in developing feathers in combination with experimental manipulations of testosterone and luteinizing hormone. By understanding the hormonal regulation of these ornaments we will gain insight into how these ornaments are linked to behavior as well as a better understanding of how hormones mediate the divergence of social feather ornaments.

鸟类羽毛是地球上多样性最显著的例子之一。羽毛的颜色和形状在鸟类的求偶仪式、伪装和其他社会和生态互动中至关重要。羽毛可以迅速进化——同一物种的种群在羽毛颜色和图案上往往表现出惊人的差异。然而，造成这些差异的机制却知之甚少。Abolins-Abols研究了个体和种群之间羽毛颜色的差异。在这篇论文的改进项目中，Abolins-Abols将研究调节两个快速进化的羽毛特征——头和尾颜色——的激素机制，这是一种小鸣禽，在美国各地的喂食者中很常见。这项研究将增加我们对鸟类颜色多样性进化的理解，因为头羽和尾羽是鸣禽变异的热点。该项目还将培训本科生，并利用新成立的鸟类标记站促进与公众的联系，在那里，abolin - abols将描述各种候鸟物种的颜色变化。这种学习系统的可负担性和简单性使其成为未来发展和演变研究项目的首选，特别是在文理学院等较小的机构中。一些羽毛装饰物被用作诚实的信号，表明它们的发育与其他表型特征（如行为）相结合。这种整合的一个候选机制是激素，它调节神经和外周过程。虽然激素已被证明可以调节羽毛颜色的性别差异，但我们还不了解激素在调节羽毛颜色的个体差异和种群差异方面的作用。Abolins-Abols建议研究遗传和激素机制，这些机制介导了两种快速进化的社会羽毛装饰——黑眼Juncos的头色和尾色——在不同颜色的种群中发展。这些诚实的羽毛装饰已被证明与睾酮生理学的个体差异有关，这表明激素和羽毛颜色之间存在因果关系。为了明确了解激素是否以及如何调节这种变化，Abolins-Abols将分析发育羽毛中激素受体基因和蛋白质的表达，并结合睾酮和黄体生成素的实验操作。通过了解这些羽毛饰品的激素调节，我们将深入了解这些饰品是如何与行为联系在一起的，并更好地理解激素是如何调节社会羽毛饰品的分化的。