ABR: Phenotypic Plasticity in the Life History of the Sailfin Molly, Poecilia latipinna (Pisces: Poeciliidae)

本研究将探讨环境诱导的柔韧性在帆鳍茉莉的生活史。很明显，几乎任何动物的生活史都受到环境的影响，如温度或食物水平的影响。然而，这种延展性的两个方面还没有得到很好的理解。首先，越来越多的证据表明，同一物种的不同种群对环境的敏感性不同。其次，尚不清楚自然选择是否塑造了这些不同的敏感性模式，如果是的话，又是如何形成的。这两个基本问题将在本研究中得到解决。本研究的经验教训可以通过几种方式应用于其他问题。首先，保护生物学越来越关注如何在一个物种灭绝的地区恢复可存活的种群。这项工作将有助于记录来自同一物种的不同种群的个体是如何“可互换”的，从而判断从该物种范围内的其他种群中吸引殖民者是否明智。其次，这种鱼的生活史的一个主要方面是它的积累和使用脂肪储存。这项工作将研究脂肪积累的遗传和环境控制，并可能导致使用鱼类模型而不是小鼠模型作为研究脂肪代谢控制某些方面的更便宜的系统。//

This study will examine the environmentally-induced flexibility in the life history of the sailfin molly. It is obvious that almost any animal's life history is malleable by environmental effects such as temperature or food level. However, two aspects of that malleability are not well understood. First, there is increasing evidence that the pattern of environmental sensitivity varies among different populations of the same species. Second, it is unclear whether natural selection has molded those different patterns of sensitivity and, if it has, how it has done so. These two basic questions will be addressed by this research. There are several ways in which the lessons from this study may be applied to other problems. First, conservation biology is focusing increasingly on how to restore viable populations of a species to an area from which it has been extirpated. This work will help document how "interchangeable" are individuals from different populations of the same species and thereby whether it is ever advisable to draw colonists from a population elsewhere in the species' range. Second, one of the major aspects of life history of this fish is its accrual and use of fat stores. This work will examine the genetic and environmental control of fat accrual and may lead to the use of fish models instead of mice as a less expensive system for studying some aspects of the control of fat metabolism.//