DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Stress-induced Parental Effects on Offspring Mate Choice: Ultimate Drivers and Proximate Mechanisms using the Threespine Stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus)

父母对子女的影响取决于父母自己的经历。通常，这些父母效应会让后代为父母的环境做好准备。例如，与捕食者接触的父母可以产生更能在相同的捕食者中生存的后代。后代繁殖也可能受到父母经历的影响，但这仍然是一个未经检验的重要问题。亲代效应是生物体对快速环境变化做出快速反应的一种方式。然而，如果父母和子女的环境不匹配，父母的影响可能会对后代不利。该项目测试父母经历的压力是否会影响他们的后代在很长一段时间内做出的配偶选择，衡量这些影响在不断变化的环境中的成本和收益，并确定潜在的基因组机制。这个项目还将导致一个基于这项研究的新的主动学习案例研究的出版，并利用它将现代进化论研究带入中学课堂。这项拟议的工作利用了一个新兴的模式系统--三刺鱼(Gastersteus Aculeatus)，在这个系统中，父母双方对后代的发育做出了实质性的、不同的贡献，而雌性对男性特征有可量化的偏好。这一建议将揭示母亲、父亲和父母的经历对后代生殖表型的相对重要性(目标1)，当父母和子女的环境匹配或不匹配时，跨代可塑性是适应性还是非适应性(目标2)，以及表观遗传状态是否导致后代择偶行为的变化(目标3)。任何父母、母亲、父亲或父母双方都不会受到捕食，他们的后代的交配决定将在父母和子女环境匹配或不匹配的条件下受到考验。初步分析表明，父亲接触捕食者往往会改变女儿的配偶偏好，而母亲接触捕食者会改变女儿交配的兴趣。如果父母的影响改变了配偶的选择，它们可能会促进对环境变化的快速反应，但这些影响是否具有适应性取决于父母和后代环境之间的一致。最后，父母对配偶选择的影响可能是由于全基因组表观遗传状态的差异，特别是DNA甲基化。AIM 3使用新技术比较了没有父母、母亲、父亲或父母双方都受到捕食的家庭后代的全基因组甲基化模式。这项建议将确定在人类改变的环境中，父母对生殖表型的影响对个体健康和种群动态的作用。

The influence of parents on their offspring depends on the parents' own experiences. Often, these parental effects prepare offspring for the parental environment. For instance, parents exposed to predators can produce offspring that are better able to survive the same predators. Offspring reproduction may also be influenced by parental experiences, but this remains an untested and important question. Parental effects are one way that organisms can respond quickly to rapid environmental change. Yet, parental effects could be bad for offspring if parent and offspring environments do not match. This project tests whether stress experienced by parents influences the mate choices made by their offspring much later, measures the costs and benefits of these effects in a changing environment, and identifies the underlying genomic mechanisms. This project will also lead to the publication of a new, active-learning case study based on this research, and use it to bring modern evolutionary research to middle school classrooms.The proposed work capitalizes on an emerging model system, threespine sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus), in which both parents make substantial, distinct contributions to offspring development and females have quantifiable preferences for male traits. This proposal will reveal the relative importance of maternal, paternal, and parental experience on offspring reproductive phenotypes (Aim 1), whether transgenerational plasticity is adaptive or maladaptive when parental and offspring environments do or do not match (Aim 2), and if epigenetic states underlie changes in offspring mate choice behavior (Aim 3). No parents, mothers, fathers, or both parents will be exposed to predation and the mating decisions of their offspring tested under conditions in which parent and offspring environments do or do not match. Preliminary analyses show that paternal predator-exposure tends to shift daughters' mate preferences, while maternal predator-exposure alters daughters' interest in mating. If parental effects modify mate choice, they may facilitate rapid responses to environmental change, but whether these effects are adaptive depends on agreement between parent and offspring environments. Finally, parental effects on mate choice may be underlain by genome-wide variation in epigenetic states, specifically DNA methylation. Aim 3 uses new techniques to compare genome-wide methylation patterns of offspring from families in which no parents, mothers, fathers, or both parents were exposed to predation. This proposal will establish the role of parental effects on reproductive phenotypes for individual fitness and population dynamics in anthropogenically altered environments.