CAREER: The role of maternal behavior in driving bidirectional interactions between infectious diseases and offspring immune phenotype.

孩子们从父母那里继承了DNA，这塑造了无数的特征，比如发色、身高和患慢性病的可能性。除了这些基因组的贡献，父母还通过他们的行为和生理塑造他们的后代，这被称为父母效应。例如，接触传染病会导致母亲将抗体传递给她们的孩子，以保护他们免受病原体的伤害。人们对传染病如何通过改变父母的行为来影响后代对病原体的反应知之甚少，但父母的行为是他们后代发育环境的关键决定因素。鸟类是一种很好的研究有机体，可以用来了解疾病对后代疾病结果的影响，这些疾病是通过父母行为的改变来调节的，因为父母和后代的生理在产卵后变得分离。一旦下蛋，父母的孵化行为就会形成鸟类胚胎发育环境的一个重要因素：温度。鸟类也是重要的研究生物，因为它们携带与野生动物、农业和人类相关的病原体。研究人员将研究疾病对禽类父母照顾行为和随后的后代对疾病的反应的影响，包括疾病传播的可能性。利用这些数据，研究人员的实验室将开发理论模型，以探索亲本效应对疫情规模和持续时间以及病原体毒力的贡献。此外，拟议的教育努力将通过与科学女性协会和一所地区性历史上的黑人大学合作提供专业发展和研究机会，帮助留住STEM学术界中代表性不足的群体。该项目跨越规模和学科，探索疾病生态学中的一个重要问题：非基因组遗传对宿主-病原体动力学有多重要？本文考察的亲本效应发生在早期发育的不同阶段，这将揭示亲本效应如何通过亲本行为与亲本生理(如母体抗体)的变化相互作用来塑造后代免疫表型，并增加我们对免疫表型对不同出生前和出生后环境的可塑性的理解。研究人员将使用鸟类模型系统来检验最重要的假设，即病原体环境塑造父母的照料行为和生殖投资，在发育环境中创造变异，影响后代疾病结果，对种群水平的疾病动态和病原体进化至关重要。鸟类是探索这些问题的一个很好的模型系统，因为在鸟类的亲代行为、发育环境(如孵化温度)和后代免疫表型之间存在明显的联系。经验数据将被用来开发理论模型，以检验复杂的跨尺度相互作用，这些相互作用导致动态反馈，以塑造宿主繁殖、宿主表型(疾病结果和传播可能性)、病原体表型(生长和繁殖)，以及最终的流行病动态。这项研究还将建立我们对早期热环境对后代疾病易感性的重要性的理解。该奖项由综合生态生理学、生理与结构系统群和行为系统群中的综合生态生理学和共生、防御和自我认可计划共同资助。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Children inherit DNA from their parents, and this shapes innumerable traits, like hair color, height, and their likelihood of developing chronic illnesses. In addition to these genomic contributions, parents also shape their offspring through their behavior and physiology, which are referred to as parental effects. For instance, exposure to infectious diseases can cause mothers to pass antibodies to their young that protect them from pathogens. Much less understood is how infectious diseases shape offspring responses to pathogens through changes in parental behavior, yet parental behavior is a key determinant of their offspring’s developmental environment. Birds represent an excellent study organism for understanding the effects of disease on offspring disease outcomes that are mediated through shifts in parental behavior, because the physiology of the parent and offspring become separated after egg-laying. Once eggs are laid, parental incubation behavior shapes a vital element of the avian embryonic developmental environment: temperature. Birds are also important study organisms because they harbor pathogens relevant to wildlife, agriculture, and humans. The investigator will study the effects of disease on avian parental care behaviors and subsequent offspring responses to disease, including likelihood of disease transmission. Using these data, the investigator’s lab will develop theoretical models to explore the contributions of parental effects to epidemic size and duration, and pathogen virulence. In addition, proposed educational efforts will help to retain underrepresented groups in STEM academia by providing professional development and research opportunities in partnership with the Association for Women in Science and a regional Historically Black University.This project crosses scales and disciplines to explore an important question in disease ecology: how important is non-genomic inheritance to host-pathogen dynamics? The parental effects examined herein occur at different stages of early development, which will reveal how parental effects mediated through shifts in parental behavior vs. parental physiology (e.g., maternal antibodies) interact to shape offspring immune phenotypes, and increase our understanding of the plasticity of immune phenotypes to variable pre- and postnatal environments. The researchers will use an avian model system to test the overarching hypothesis that the pathogen environment shapes parental care behaviors and reproductive investment creating variation in the developmental environment to affect offspring disease outcomes important to population-level disease dynamics and pathogen evolution. Birds are an excellent model system to explore these questions because there is a clear link between avian parental behavior, the developmental environment (e.g., incubation temperature), and offspring immune phenotype. Empirical data will be used to develop theoretical models examining complex cross-scale interactions that result in dynamic feedbacks to shape host reproduction, host phenotype (disease outcomes and transmission likelihood), pathogen phenotype (growth and reproduction), and ultimately, epidemic dynamics. This research also will build our understanding of the importance of the early thermal environment to offspring disease susceptibility. This award was co-funded by the Integrative Ecological Physiology and the Symbiosis, Defense and Self-recognition programs in the Physiological and Structural Systems cluster and the Behavioral Systems cluster within the Division of Integrative Organismal Systems.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.