The Evolution of Trade-offs Between Growth and Predator Avoidance

麦克皮克9707787几乎所有的生物都必须为自己找到足够的食物，同时又不能成为其他生物的食物。这些目标也经常是相互冲突的；使有机体更善于寻找食物的特性往往会使其更难躲避捕食者。虽然这种能力上的权衡在许多分类群中被普遍观察到，但产生这种基本权衡的潜在表型结构却鲜为人知。在这项提案中，PI将描述研究，以探索在幼虫蜻蜓(昆虫门)的生长和捕食者避免之间产生这种权衡的生物的特性，并重建这些特性是如何随着这种分类群在具有不同捕食者和不同资源可用性的栖息地之间转移而演变的。PI将对四种不同的生物特性进行研究，以探索这种权衡的根本原因，包括(1)运动和活动、(2)突发性游泳能力和无氧生理能力、(3)消化效率和(4)有氧代谢能力的差异。分析将检验关于人物之间的功能耦合以及这些功能耦合的进化的假设。研究这些功能耦合是如何演变的，对于在分类群适应自然和人类引起的环境变化(例如，自然生境变化、气候变化、生境退化)时影响它们的制约因素提供了宝贵的见解。

McPeek 9707787 Almost all organisms must find enough food for themselves while trying not to become food for another organism. These are also often conflicting objectives; the properties that make an organism better at finding food often makes it worse at avoiding predators. Although this tradeoff in abilities is commonly observed in many taxa, the underlying phenotypic architecture that generates this fundamental trade-off is poorly understood. In this proposal the PI will describe research to explore the properties of organisms generating such a trade-off between growth and predator avoidance in larval damselflies (Insecta), and to reconstruct how these properties have evolved as this taxon has shifted between habitats with different predators and different resource availabilities. The PI will conduct studies of four different organismal properties to explore the underlying causes of this trade-off, including differences in (1) movement and activity, (2) burst swimming ability and anaerobic physiological capacities, (3) digestive efficiency, and (4) aerobic metabolic capacity. Analyses will test hypotheses about the functional couplings among characters and the evolution of these functional couplings. Examining how these functional couplings have evolved provides valuable insights into the constraints affecting taxa as they adapt to natural and anthropogenically-induced environmental change (e.g., natural habitat shifts, climate change, habitat degradation).