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

我的研究计划旨在了解生态原因和生殖成功，长寿和生活史策略的变化的进化后果。了解一生中经历的环境条件与适应性之间的联系是进化生物学研究的核心。在气候迅速变化的情况下，适应可能很快就会过时。即使在一代人的时间里，年轻人所经历的情况也可能与成年人所经历的情况不同。这一主题对加拿大人至关重要，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，强大的数量遗传学方法的系谱和详细的纵向数据已知的个人（如年龄在第二胎，出生间隔和年龄特定的生存），以更好地了解适应的动态在个体发育和跨代。我的研究计划将侧重于1）量化生理，形态和行为的个体差异如何影响健身与环境变化的相互作用; 2）研究早期生活条件和终身健身之间的关系;和3）确定健身的遗传力是依赖于环境的程度。我的研究将基于对自2012年以来监测的单独标记的野生东部花栗鼠的纵向研究，以及魁北克省80万名出生于1608年至1750年之间的工业化前人类的长期数据集。已知这些系统在环境上变化很大。这两种方法都提供了对个体进行纵向分析和为遗传分析收集谱系的潜力。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，依赖于已经收集并准备进行分析的高质量数据，但也有助于在现场和实验室中不断增长的数据集。因此，我的研究计划将为研究生的培训提供一个理想的环境，并提供有关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.