Dynamic environments and the biomechanics of animal weapons

几个世纪以来，男性与男性之间的竞争一直吸引着人类的想象力。事实上，距今3万年前的法国肖维洞穴的图画显示，多毛犀牛用它们突出的角相互挖洞。这项古老的艺术描绘了一种常见的战斗伤害风险。身体的许多部位都可能受伤，武器本身也是如此。该项目测试了野生动物饮食的动态波动对其武器的结构、使用和抗伤害能力的影响。它雇佣了一种战斗昆虫，叶足仙人掌臭虫，纳尼亚Femorata(半翅目：Coreidae)，因为它有可能在整个动物界获得非凡的洞察力。事实上，一个主要的目标是为营养对形态和功能的影响提供广泛的生物力学见解。因此，它将提供与人类健康、保护科学、虫害管理等相关的基础知识。调查人员的公共宣传活动将包括为美国农村地区的中学生进行六次现场在线科学实地考察。该项目还将支持科学指导和职业发展机会。例如，实验室将欢迎年轻的研究人员进入受薪职位，以获得生物力学和行为学方面的宝贵经验。此外，还将在海外学生和美国学生之间开展科学培训交流。性选择的装饰品以其令人惊叹的颜色和在复杂的展示中的使用而闻名。装饰品和武器的表达对环境因素都极其敏感，但武器与装饰品是根本不同的。虽然它们可以像装饰品一样作为同种事物的信号，但从定义上讲，它们是战斗结构；一个重要的功能在于体力战斗。因此，从生物力学的角度理解武器的进化将是有益的。这个项目将生物力学与生态学和微观进化生物学的研究工具结合在一起，研究饮食在动物武器表达和进化中的作用。具体地说，第一个目的是测试营养的季节性变化对昆虫武器结构完整性及其材料特性的影响。第二个目的是将营养对武器结构影响的发现与行为相关，将形式与功能联系起来。值得注意的是，这项工作不仅对我们了解武器的开发和使用有价值，而且对于更广泛地了解营养对昆虫骨骼的影响也是有价值的。令人惊讶的是，我们对营养对昆虫外骨骼生长和重塑的影响知之甚少，特别是考虑到昆虫占地球上所有动物物种的80%。因此，这个项目的相关性将是广泛的，扩展到昆虫生理学、捕食者-猎物动力学、医学昆虫学、害虫管理和昆虫保护等领域。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Male-male competition has captured the human imagination for centuries. In fact, drawings from the Chauvet Cave in France, dated 30,000 years before present, show wooly rhinoceros gouging each other with their prominent horns. This ancient art depicts a common risk of fighting – injury. Many areas of the body can be injured, and so can the weapons themselves. This project tests the effects of dynamic fluctuations in the diet of wild animals on the structure, use, and injury-resistance of their weapons. It employs a fighting insect, the leaf-footed cactus bug, Narnia femorata (Hemiptera: Coreidae), due to the potential for extraordinary insights relevant across the animal kingdom. Indeed, a major goal is to provide broad biomechanical insights into the effects of nutrition on form and function. As such it will provide fundamental knowledge relevant to human health, conservation science, pest management, and much more. Public outreach efforts by the investigators will include six live, online scientific field trips for middle school students in rural areas of the United States. This project will also support scientific mentoring and professional development opportunities. For example, young researchers will be welcomed into the laboratory into paid positions to gain valuable experience in biomechanics and behavior. In addition, a scientific training exchange will be developed between students abroad and the United States. Sexually selected ornaments are well-known for their stunning colors and use in complex displays. The expression of both ornaments and weapons is extremely sensitive to environmental factors, but weapons are fundamentally different from ornaments. While they may serve as signals to conspecifics like ornaments do, they are, by definition, fighting structures; an important function lies in physical combat. Thus, understanding the evolution of weapons will benefit from a biomechanical perspective. This project weaves together biomechanics with tools from the studies of ecology and micro-evolutionary biology, examining the role of diet in the expression and evolution of animal weaponry. Specifically, the first aim tests the effects of seasonal changes in nutrition on the structural integrity of an insect weapon and its material properties. The second aim imbues the discoveries of nutrition’s effects on weapon structure with behavioral relevance, linking form to function. Notably, this work will not only be valuable for our understanding of the development and use of weapons, but also for figuring out the influence of nutrition on the insect skeleton more generally. It is astonishing that we know so little about nutrition’s effects on the growth and remodeling of the insect exoskeleton, especially considering that insects comprise up to 80% of all animal species on this planet. Thus, the relevance of this project will be broad, extending to fields such as insect physiology, predator-prey dynamics, medical entomology, pest management, and insect conservation.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.