Effects of environmental modification and early life stress on wildlife behaviour, physiology, and fitness.

我的研究项目主要集中在早期生命环境的持续影响，通过整合野生种群的生态和生理观点。早期生活环境，越来越多地由强大的人为因素塑造，可以在动物的生命史阶段产生持久的影响，但是，对个体行为，生理和健康的下游影响还没有得到很好的理解。 在接下来的五年里，我的实验室将专注于城市化和农业集约化的最终和近期影响，这是环境改造的两个深刻驱动因素，居住在这些环境中的生物受到一系列新的压力和选择压力。使用两个成熟的模型系统（萨凡纳麻雀和灰松鼠），我建议研究与城市和农业环境相关的早期生活压力如何影响野生动物的生理学，行为和健身，以及环境改造如何影响微生物组和神经生理学之间的双向关系（肠-脑轴）。评估和测试改造环境对野生动物生理生态的影响是理解环境变化长期影响的一个关键方面。我们提出的野生，标记，人口的研究提供了一个无与伦比的机会，以测试新的预测与修改景观环境压力的生态和生理结果，更普遍的是，告知机制，生物体用于科普快速的环境变化。 此外，这项研究将促进不同HQP的多学科技能发展，提供参与公共宣传和公民科学的机会，并为了解环境压力如何影响一系列脊椎动物类群的生态生理学提供见解。

My research program focuses on the persistent effects of the early-life environment by integrating ecological and physiological perspectives in wild populations. The early-life environment, increasingly shaped by powerful anthropogenic factors, can have lasting effects across an animal's life history stages, but, the downstream influences on individual behaviour, physiology and fitness are not well understood. Over the next five years, my lab will focus on the ultimate and proximate effects of urbanization and agricultural intensification, which are two profound drivers of environmental modification and organisms inhabiting these environments are subject to a suite of novel stressors and selective pressures. Using two well-established model systems (savannah sparrows and grey squirrels), I propose to investigate how early life stress associated with urban and agricultural environments impact wildlife physiology, behaviour and fitness, and how environmental modification impacts the bidirectional relationship between the microbiome and neurophysiology (the gut-brain axis). Evaluating and testing the effects of modified environments on wildlife ecophysiology is a critical dimension of understanding the long-term impacts of environmental change. Our proposed studies on wild, marked, populations provide an unparalleled opportunity to test novel predictions on ecological and physiological outcomes of environmental stress associated with modified landscapes, and, more generally, inform about the mechanisms that organisms use to cope with rapid environmental changes. Further, this research will foster the multidisciplinary skill development of diverse HQP, provide opportunity to engage in public outreach and citizen science, and provide insights for understanding how environmental stress influences the ecophysiology of a range of vertebrate taxa.