The impact of environmental variability on life history trade-offs: a multi scale approach

我的研究项目旨在了解生殖成功、寿命和生活史策略变异的生态原因和进化后果。了解一生中所经历的环境条件与健康之间的联系是进化生物学研究的核心。在气候迅速变化的背景下，适应可能很快就会过时。即使在一代之内，年轻时所经历的情况也可能与成年时所经历的情况不同。这个话题对加拿大人来说是最重要的，因为我国正面临着异常高的环境变化率。我将使用分子生态学技术、强大的家谱定量遗传学方法和已知个体的详细纵向数据（如初产年龄、生育间隔和年龄特异性生存），以更好地了解个体发育过程中和跨代的适应动态。我的研究计划将集中在1)量化生理、形态和行为的个体差异如何在与环境变化的相互作用中影响适应性；2)研究早期生活条件与终生健康的关系；3)确定适合度的遗传能力在多大程度上依赖于环境。我的研究将基于一项纵向研究，研究对象是自2012年以来一直受到监测的带有单独标记的野生东方花栗鼠，以及一个长期数据集，该数据集包括1608年至1750年间出生的80万名来自青海的工业化前人类。众所周知，这些系统的环境变化非常大。两者都提供了很大的潜力，以执行纵向分析的个人和组装谱系的遗传分析。这些数据集提供了一种平衡的方法来促进我的研究计划的成功，依赖于已经收集和准备分析的高质量数据，但也有助于在现场和实验室中增加数据集。因此，我的研究项目将为培养研究生提供一个理想的环境，并提供关于环境变化如何影响种群进化潜力的见解，这是评估种群对气候变化脆弱性的关键。

My research program seeks to understand the ecological causes and evolutionary consequences of variation in reproductive success, longevity and life-history strategies. Understanding the links between environmental conditions experienced over the lifetime and fitness is central to the study of evolutionary biology. Adaptations may quickly become obsolete in a context of rapid climate change. Even within a single generation, the conditions experienced at a young age may differ from those experienced during adulthood. This topic is of foremost importance for Canadians, as our country is facing exceptionally high rates of environmental variation. I will use molecular ecology techniques, powerful quantitative genetics methods on pedigree and detailed longitudinal data on known individuals (such as age at primiparity, inter-birth intervals and age-specific survival) to better understand the dynamics of adaptation during ontogeny and across generations. My research program will focus on 1) quantifying how individual differences in physiology, morphology and behaviour affect fitness in interaction with environmental variation; 2) studying the relationship between early life conditions and lifetime fitness; and 3) determining the extent to which heritability of fitness is context-dependent. My research will be based on a longitudinal study of individually-marked wild Eastern chipmunks that are monitored since 2012 and on a long-term dataset of 800,000 pre-industrial humans from Québec that were born between 1608 and 1750. These systems are known to be very variable environmentally. Both offer much potential to perform longitudinal analyses on individuals and assemble pedigree for genetic analyses. These datasets offer a balanced approach to facilitate the success of my research program, relying on high quality data that are already collected and ready for analyses, but also contributing to growing datasets in the field and in the lab. Consequently, my research program will provide an ideal environment for the training of graduate students and provide insights about how environmental variation affect the evolutionary potential of populations, which is key to assess the vulnerability of populations to climate change.