Dietary tuning of poison frog tadpole behavior and development

毒蛙是有毒的，因为它们能够从食物中吸收生物碱并进行生物积累，这种毒性与它们明显的颜色有关，被称为警示性。在一种石蛙类毒蛙中，蝌蚪是由它们的母亲喂养的，它们的母亲会周期性地将含有生物碱的未受精卵储存下来供它们食用。动物的行为由中枢神经系统协调，并受早期饮食的影响。为了研究取食频率和生物碱摄入量对毒蛙发育和行为的影响，我提出了一个不同实验的项目：i)结合3D免疫组织化学（iDISCO）进行行为分析，以确定控制处理、禁食处理（喂食量相同但频率较低）和生物碱处理（喂食量和频率相同但添加反式十氢喹啉生物碱）下蝌蚪乞讨和攻击行为的神经回路的差异；Ii)评估这些处理如何影响蝌蚪的代谢率和发育，以及它们是否对幼崽的代谢率和行为有携带效应；Iii)测试幼鱼这些行为的强度是否与下丘脑相关神经肽和受体的表达相关。这项工作将为研究毒蛙亲代抚育的进化奠定基础，并将为研究警告行为的进化奠定神经和分子基础。

Poison frogs are toxic due to alkaloids they are able to take up from the diet and bioaccumulate, and this toxicity correlates to their conspicuous coloration, known as aposematism. In a dendrobatid poison frog, Ranitomeya imitator, tadpoles are fed by their mothers, who periodically deposit alkaloid-containing unfertilized eggs for their consumption. Animal behaviors are coordinated by the central nervous system and influenced by early life diet. With the aim to investigate how feeding frequency and alkaloid consumption influence the development and behavior of poison frogs, I propose a project with different experiments: i) to conduct behavioral assays coupled to 3D immunohistochemistry (iDISCO) to identify differences in the neural circuitry for begging and aggressive behaviors in tadpoles under a control treatment, a fasting treatment (fed the same quantity but less frequently) and an alkaloid treatment (fed the same quantity and frequency but adding the alkaloid trans-Decahydroquinoline); ii) to evaluate how these treatments affect tadpoles’ metabolic rate and development, and if they have a carry-over effect on the juvenile metabolic rate and behavior; iii) to test if the intensity of these behaviors in juveniles is correlated to the expression of pertinent neuropeptides and receptors in the hypothalamus. This work will set a baseline to study the evolution of parental care in poison frogs and will pioneer in setting a neural and molecular basis to investigate the evolution of aposematism and aposematic behavior.