Collaborative Research: RUI: Life history strategies within a population depend on cellular and organismal traits that underlie differences in resource acquisition and allocation

所有生物体都需要能量来为生命的生物过程提供燃料。一般来说，这种能量可以分配给三大类：生长、自我维持和繁殖。换句话说，生物体可以分配获得的能量来生长它们的身体以达到更大的尺寸，修复和维持它们的身体以延长寿命，或者繁殖和创造它们后代的新身体。然而，能量是有限的，所以如果更多的投入到生长中，那么投入到自我维持和繁殖中的就会更少。这就导致了分配上的权衡，有些人更擅长成长，而另一些人可能会非常长寿。虽然这些模式在动物中普遍存在，但在许多物种中，科学家观察到某些个体似乎能够做到这一切而几乎没有什么后果，但人们对这是如何发生的知之甚少。这项提案研究了一种长寿的海鸟，利奇风暴海燕，在过去的70年里，我们一直在研究这种海鸟。这表明，虽然我们有许多人表现出预期的分配权衡，但也有许多人以某种方式逃脱了这种权衡。我们的工作探索了分子和细胞过程，这些过程是避免这种权衡的基础。这项工作专注于生物学中的一个基本问题，并将帮助我们了解分子过程和生物体性能如何影响寿命。这项工作也有力地支持了本科科学教育，并将导致在初中和高中课堂上使用的基于探究的科学模块的发展。驱动物种内部和物种之间不同生命史策略进化的因素仍然是生态学和进化生物学的一个基本问题。由于资源是有限的，许多生命史特征受制于内在的权衡。然而，理论模型表明，个体获取资源的差异可以在繁殖投资和生存投资之间产生明显的正相关，而不是预期的权衡。本研究通过研究一种长寿海鸟——利奇风暴海燕（Hydrobates leucorhous）——在当前繁殖和生存之间平衡策略的表型变异来测试这些模型，该海鸟自1953年以来一直在我们的地点进行研究。该建议有三个主要目标：1)更好地理解该种群中观察到的权衡策略变化背后的分子、细胞和有机体性能特征；2)确定是否像理论模型中提出的那样，通过更高的觅食效率来逃避权衡；3)确定这些权衡策略是固定的还是可塑的，以应对环境变化。该研究以我们70年的人口统计数据集为基础，并利用(i)新技术和分子工具的结合来理解在权衡策略中观察到的变化背后的分子、细胞和有机体性能特征，以及（ii）实验操作来探索这些策略是固定的还是可塑的。该项目由综合生态生理学项目和促进竞争研究的既定项目（EPSCoR）共同资助。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

All organisms need energy to fuel the biological processes of life. In general, this energy can be allocated to three broad categories: growth, self-maintenance, and reproduction. Said in another way, organisms can allocate acquired energy to grow their body to achieve a larger size, to repair and maintain their body to live longer, or to reproduce and create the new bodies of their offspring. However energy is limiting, so if more is invested into growth, less can be invested into self-maintenance and reproduction. This results in allocation trade-offs, where some individuals are better at growing, while others may be able to attain extreme longevity. While these patterns generally hold in animals, in many species scientist’s observe certain individuals who appear to be able to do it all with few consequences, but little is known about how this occurs. This proposal studies a long-lived seabird, Leach's storm-petrels, that has been studied continuously at our site for the past 70 years. This has revealed that while we have many individuals who show the expected allocation trade-offs there are also many that somehow have escaped that trade-off. Our work explores the molecular and cellular processes that underlie the ability to avoid this trade-off. This work is focused on a fundamental question in biology, and will help us to understand how molecular processes and organismal performance affect longevity. This work also strongly supports undergraduate science education, and will result in the development of inquiry-based scientific modules used in middle school and high school classrooms.Factors driving the evolution of diverse life history strategies both within and between species remain a fundamental question in ecology and evolutionary biology. Because resources are finite, many life history traits are subject to intrinsic trade-offs. However, theoretical models have proposed that variation in individual acquisition of resources can produce apparent positive correlations between investment in reproduction and investment in survival instead of the expected trade-off. This proposal tests these models by examining phenotypic variation in strategies to balance the trade-off between current reproduction and survival in a long-lived seabird, Leach's storm-petrels (Hydrobates leucorhous), that has been studied continuously at our site since 1953. This proposal has three primary objectives: 1) to better understand the molecular, cellular, and organismal performance traits that underlie the observed variation in trade-off strategies in this population, and 2) to determine if individuals who appear to escape the trade-off do so via higher foraging efficiency as proposed in theoretical models, and 3) to determine whether these trade-off strategies are fixed or plastic in response to environmental variability. The proposed research is informed by our 70-year demographic data set, and utilizes (i) a combination of novel technology and molecular tools to understand the molecular, cellular, and organismal performance traits that underlie the observed variation in trade-off strategies, and (ii) experimental manipulations to explore whether these strategies are fixed or plastic.This project is jointly funded by the Integrative Ecological Physiology Program and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).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.