The Genetics of Behavioral Reproductive Isolation in Threespine Sticklebacks

描述(由申请人提供)：尽管在人类行为和人类行为障碍的正常变异范围中有重要的基因贡献，但对任何生物体中影响行为的基因知之甚少。具体地说，目前很少有模式脊椎动物系统可以通过基因解剖来研究自然、异种繁殖种群的行为变异。三刺鱼(Gasterbone Us Aculeatus)遗传和基因组工具的最新发展为在明确的生态和进化背景下研究行为变异的遗传基础提供了机会。三刺鱼的交配行为可能是所有动物系统中研究得最好的。先前的研究表明，雄性和雌性交配行为的差异会导致适应在同一个湖泊中两种不同栖息地(底栖和滩涂)生活的刺鱼种群之间的生殖隔离。在不列颠哥伦比亚省的多个湖泊中，这些底栖生物和湖泊物种对已经进化，在每个湖泊中，交配行为的类似变化都独立发生。本研究的目的是利用数量性状基因座(QTL)定位技术，研究两个湖泊(Priest和Paxton)底栖刺鱼和湖滨刺鱼生殖隔离行为的遗传基础。这些实验种群将在室外池塘中完全自然的条件下进行饲养和行为评估。通过研究涉及生殖隔离的行为表型的遗传基础(例如，雄性筑巢行为和雌性配偶偏好)，这项工作将测试隔离湖泊中平行物种对的刺鱼是否共享涉及生殖隔离的收敛行为的相似遗传结构。该项目还将测试影响生殖隔离行为的QTL是否不成比例地定位到影响已知对配偶选择重要的特征的基因组区域，如身体大小和形状。重要的是，这里提出的QTL定位实验将作为识别天然刺鱼种群行为差异的基因的第一步。刺鱼的研究结果可能对理解人类行为变异和行为障碍的遗传基础具有重要意义，因为构成行为的许多遗传和神经路径可能在鱼和人类之间保守。此外，人类和刺鱼在相似的进化时间框架内迁移并适应了新的环境，这表明研究刺鱼行为变异的遗传结构与人类的类似研究直接相关。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Although there is an important genetic contribution to the normal range of variation seen in human behaviors as well as human behavioral disorders, very little is known about the genes that influence behavior in any organism. In particular, there are currently few model vertebrate systems in which the study of behavioral variation in a natural, outbred population can be genetically dissected. The recent development of genetic and genomic tools for the threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) presents an opportunity to study the genetic basis of behavioral variation in a well-defined ecological and evolutionary context. The mating behaviors of the threespine stickleback are perhaps the best-studied of any animal system. Previous work has shown that divergence in male and female mating behaviors leads to reproductive isolation between stickleback populations that have adapted to living in two different habitats ('benthic' and 'limnetic') in a single lake. There are multiple lakes in British Columbia in which these benthic and limnetic 'species pairs' have evolved, and similar changes in mating behavior have occurred independently in each lake. The aim of this study is to investigate the genetic underpinnings of behaviors involved in reproductive isolation between benthic and limnetic sticklebacks from two lakes (Priest and Paxton) using quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping. These experimental populations will be raised and behaviorally evaluated under fully natural conditions in outdoor ponds. By investigating the genetic basis of behavioral phenotypes involved in reproductive isolation (e.g., male nesting behavior and female mate preferences), this work will test whether parallel species pairs of sticklebacks in isolated lakes share similar genetic architectures for convergent behaviors involved in reproductive isolation. This project will also test whether QTL influencing behaviors involved in reproductive isolation map disproportionately to genomic regions affecting traits known to be important for mate selection, such as body size and shape. Importantly, the QTL mapping experiments proposed here will serve as a first step in the identification of genes that underlie behavioral differences in natural stickleback populations. Results in sticklebacks are likely to have important implications for understanding the genetic basis of behavioral variation and behavioral disorders in humans because many of the genetic and neural pathways that underlie behaviors are likely to be conserved between fish and humans. In addition, humans and sticklebacks have migrated and adapted to new environments over a similar evolutionary timeframe, suggesting that studying the genetic architecture of behavioral variation in sticklebacks has direct relevance to similar studies in humans.