The role of additive and non-additive genetic effects during animal contests in the beadlet sea anemone Actinia equina

个体动物行为的差异应该受到它们的基因和环境的影响。此外，动物的环境应该与其基因相互作用，改变它们如何在个体表型中向外表达。理解这两种变异源的相对贡献是理解关键行为进化的关键。个体之间最重要的行为差异之一是他们的战斗能力，因为这决定了他们对关键资源的获取。在许多打斗动物的例子中，我们看到了攻击性的变化，从进化的角度来看，这是一个谜。如果进化产生了自私的个体，而高侵略性让他们赢得了资源，为什么我们也看到温顺的个体无法战胜侵略性的对手？人们提出了一系列理论论证，解释了为什么我们会在动物种群中看到这种攻击性行为。但是，没有基因和环境之间相互作用的数据，我们无法衡量这些理论与现实世界的匹配程度。至关重要的是，在战斗和其他存在利益冲突的情况下，一个个体的对手（因此是它的基因）构成了该个体环境的一部分。因此，为了充分理解攻击行为的进化，我们不仅要了解基因对个体攻击行为的直接影响；我们还必须了解这是如何被其竞争对手的行为以及最终的基因所改变的。这种效应被称为“基因型-基因型”相互作用效应，目前对任何动物或任何类型的冲突行为都知之甚少。他将研究海葵基因型间的相互作用。它们在英国海岸很常见，是一个很好的研究对象，因为它们是无性繁殖的，这意味着我们可以反复观察不同克隆系之间的争斗。他们的战斗行为以及有助于战斗能力的外在特征都很容易理解。在这个项目中，我们将研究基因型与基因型之间的相互作用，基因型内部和基因型之间的攻击性变化，过去战斗经历的影响以及战斗对手亲缘程度的影响。通过这种方式，我们的目标是解决关于攻击行为进化的长期问题。在研究结束时，我们希望能够解释为什么动物中有些个体比其他个体更具攻击性。

Variation between individual animals in their behaviour should be influenced by their genes and by their environment. Moreover, an animal's environment should interact with its genes modifying how they are expressed outwardly in the individual's phenotype. Understanding the relative contribution of these two sources of variation is key to understanding the evolution of critical behaviours. One of the most important areas of behavioural variation among individuals is in their fighting ability, because this determines their access to critical resources. In many examples of fighting animals we see variation in aggression and from an evolutionary point of view this is a puzzle. If evolution produces selfish individuals, and high aggression lets them win resources, why do we also see meeker individuals that cannot win against aggressive opponents? A set of theoretical arguments have been made that provide explanations for why we see this range of aggressive behaviour in animal populations. But without data on interactions between genes and environments we can't gauge how well these theories match the real world. Crucially, in fighting and other situations where there is a conflict of interest, an individual's rival (and therefore it's genes) form part of that individual's environment. To fully understand the evolution of aggressive behaviour we therefore have to understand not only the direct genetic contribution to an individual's aggressive behaviour; we also have to understand how this is modified by the behaviour and ultimately the genes of its rival. This effect is known as the 'genotype-by-genotype' interaction effect and at present very little is known about this for any animal, or for any type of conflict behaviour. He we will study genotype-by-genotype interactions in sea anemones. These are very common on the coasts of the UK and they are an excellent species to work on because they reproduce asexually, meaning that we can repeatedly look at fights between different clone-lines. Their fighting behaviour, as well as the outward characters that contribute to fighting ability are well understood. In this project, we will look at genotype-by-genotype interactions, variation in aggression within and between genotypes, the effects of past experiences of fighting and the effects of the degree of relatedness of fighting rivals. In this way we aim to solve long-standing questions about the evolution of aggressive behaviour. By the end of the study we hope to be able to explain why some individuals are more aggressive than others in animals.