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，这些亲本效应使后代为亲本环境做好准备。例如，父母暴露于捕食者可以产生后代，能够更好地生存相同的捕食者。后代的繁殖也可能受到父母经验的影响，但这仍然是一个未经检验的重要问题。亲本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，如果父母和后代的环境不匹配，父母的影响可能对后代不利。该项目测试父母经历的压力是否会影响后代以后的择偶选择，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。该项目还将导致一个新的，主动学习的案例研究的基础上，这项研究的出版，并使用它来把现代进化研究到中学classical.The拟议的工作利用一个新兴的模型系统，三刺鱼（Gasterosteus aculeatus），其中父母双方作出实质性的，独特的贡献，后代的发展和女性有可量化的偏好男性的特征。这个建议将揭示母亲，父亲和父母的经验对后代生殖表型的相对重要性（目标1），跨代可塑性是适应性还是适应不良时，父母和后代的环境做或不匹配（目标2），如果表观遗传状态下的后代择偶行为的变化（目标3）。没有父母，母亲，父亲，或父母双方将暴露于捕食和交配的决定，他们的后代测试的条件下，父母和后代的环境匹配或不匹配。初步分析表明，父亲的捕食者暴露倾向于改变女儿的配偶偏好，而母亲的捕食者暴露改变女儿的交配兴趣。如果父母的影响改变了配偶选择，他们可能会促进对环境变化的快速反应，但这些影响是否适应取决于父母和后代环境之间的协议。最后，表观遗传状态的全基因组变异（特别是DNA甲基化）可能是父母对择偶的影响的基础。目标3使用新技术比较来自没有父母、母亲、父亲或父母双方都暴露于捕食的家庭的后代的全基因组甲基化模式。这一建议将建立在遗传改变的环境中，亲本对个体适合度和种群动态的生殖表型的影响。

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.