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

我的研究项目试图了解繁殖成功、寿命和生活史策略变异的生态原因和进化后果。了解生命中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。在快速气候变化的背景下，适应可能很快就会过时。即使在一代人中，年轻时所经历的情况也可能与成年时所经历的不同。这一主题对加拿大人来说至关重要，因为我们国家正面临着异常高的环境变化率。我将使用分子生态学技术、强大的系谱定量遗传学方法以及已知个体的详细纵向数据(如初产年龄、出生间隔和特定年龄的存活率)，以更好地理解个体发育和世代之间的适应动态。我的研究计划将集中在1)量化个体在生理、形态和行为方面的差异如何在与环境变化的互动中影响健康；2)研究早期生活条件和终生健康之间的关系；3)确定健康的遗传性在多大程度上取决于背景。我的研究将基于对自2012年以来被监测的单独标记的东部野生花栗鼠的纵向研究，以及对出生于1608年至1750年之间的魁北克80万名工业化前人类的长期数据集。众所周知，这些系统对环境的影响非常大。这两种方法都提供了对个体进行纵向分析和收集家系进行遗传分析的很大潜力。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.