The Genetics of Parental Care Behavior

父母照料行为的遗传学埃德蒙·D·布罗迪III很难理解社会互动中涉及的行为的遗传控制，因为一个人的特征会受到与之互动的个人特征的影响。这种影响传统上被认为是环境表型变异的来源，但这种观点忽略了这样一种可能性，即‘环境’影响本身可能是由基因决定的。其结果是形成了一个复杂的遗传效应网络，从一个个体的特征延伸到另一个个体的特征，并允许环境变异来源促进进化变化。间接遗传效应(IGE)理论通过传统上用于理解进化过程的数量遗传参数和方程，为理解这种复杂的遗传提供了一个框架。IGES的存在可以在很大程度上改变进化动力学和结果，但几乎没有关于IGES的实证研究来评估IGES在行为进化中的一般重要性。父母的照顾行为是产生IGES的社会互动的最常见的例子之一。父母和子女的行为决定了父母提供多少照顾，而父母的照顾反过来又影响到后代的许多特征。如果父母照顾的父母和子女部分在遗传上是可变的，那么IGES就会存在，并可能影响父母照顾的演变。这项拟议的研究将调查洞穴昆虫--西门子的母体供养的遗传学。在洞穴动物中，父母的照顾仅限于雌性，它们为后代提供薄荷植物的水果作为唯一的营养来源。先前的研究表明，穴居动物是研究父母照料遗传学的理想系统，因为它们可以很容易地被交叉养育、饲养和圈养繁殖。这项拟议的工作分为两个部分，旨在确定母亲和子女之间的基因如何相互作用，以确定父母照顾行为的遗传。项目1是一项关于母婴护理如何影响后代特征的实验研究，将揭示一代人的特征如何影响下一代人的特征。项目2将定量遗传育种设计与操纵性交叉培养实验相结合，以衡量父母和后代基因在决定供应方面的相对重要性。该项目还将确定供应行为的父母和子女之间的遗传变异和协变模式。遗传变异是任何性状进化的必要条件。免疫球蛋白E理论认识到，相互作用的表型(例如，父母照顾)的遗传(共同)变异不需要是直接的，而是可能通过来自社会伴侣的间接途径存在。每个项目的具体结果将被用来检验父母照料演变的表型模型的假设和预测。此外，这项工作将是第一次对父母照顾行为进行量化遗传学研究，以考虑社会背景的重要性。

The Genetics of Parental Care BehaviorEdmund D. Brodie IIIIThe genetic control of behaviors involved in social interactions is difficult to understand because traits of one individual can be influenced by traits of individuals with which it interacts. Such influences have traditionally been considered sources of environmental variation in phenotypes, but this view ignores the possibility that the 'environmental' influences can themselves be genetically determined. The result is a complex web of genetic effects that reach from traits in one individual to traits in another and allows environmental sources of variation to contribute to evolutionary change. Indirect genetic effect (IGE) theory provides a framework for understanding such complex inheritance in terms of the quantitative genetic parameters and equations traditionally used to understand evolutionary processes. The presence of IGEs can substantially alter evolutionary dynamics and outcomes, but virtually no empirical studies of IGEs are available with which to evaluate the general importance of IGEs in behavioral evolution. Parental care behavior is one of the most common examples of social interactions that can generate IGEs. The behavior of both parents and offspring determines how much care parents provide, and parental care in turn influences many traits in offspring. If parent and offspring components of parental care are genetically variable, IGEs exist and can affect the evolution of parental care. The proposed research will investigate the genetics of maternal provisioning in the burrower bug, Sehirus cinctus. Parental care in burrowers is limited to females, which provision their offspring with fruits from mint plants as the sole source of nutrition. Previous research has shown that burrowers are an ideal system for studying the genetics of parental care because they can be readily cross-fostered, reared, and bred in captivity. The proposed work is divided into two parts designed to determine how genes in mothers and offspring interact to determine the inheritance of parental care behavior. Project 1 is an experimental investigation of how maternal care influences offspring traits that will reveal how traits in one generation influence traits in the next. Project 2 combines a quantitative genetic breeding design with manipulative cross-fostering experiments to measure the relative importance of genes in parents and offspring in determining provisioning. This project will also determine patterns of genetic variation and covariation among parent and offspring components of provisioning behavior. Genetic variation is a requisite for the evolution of any trait. IGE theory recognizes that genetic (co)variation for interacting phenotypes (e.g., parental care) need not be direct, but rather may exist through indirect pathways from social partners. Specific results from each project will be used to test assumptions and predictions of phenotypic models of parental care evolution. Moreover, this work will represent the first quantitative genetic study of parental care behavior to consider the importance of social context.