RUI: Nutrition and Life History Transitions

食用食物的数量和质量是影响动物生长发育的重要因素，也是影响动物对环境压力的反应能力的重要因素。该项目将研究营养如何影响生命早期对营养和环境应激的反应，以及这些不同的反应如何影响发育时间和未来的适应性。研究人员将重点研究两栖动物蝌蚪，因为它们易于在野外和实验室中进行研究，而且蝌蚪和哺乳动物胎儿发育的生理机制相似。研究人员预计，随着营养状况的变化而变化的生理因素（神经肽Y和瘦素）将在大脑分子水平上改变应激轴的敏感性，这样，条件较好的蝌蚪对环境应激源的反应更强，并且在整个生命中比条件较差的蝌蚪有更大的生长和生存概率。这项研究的发现将增加我们对营养状况如何在早期发育过程中与压力相互作用以改变变态时间的理解，并可能与这些因素影响其他生活史转变时间的方式有关，如出生或青春期。此外，该项目将把早期发育期间的压力经历与晚年健康问题和生存的威胁增加联系起来。该项目还将对科学教育产生重大影响，因为本科生将主要进行实验和分析，从而为生态学或生物医学研究的研究生课程提供良好的培训。该项目还将培养一名博士后，使其能够扩展其研究和教学技能，并为不熟悉研究生水平科学教育经验的本科生起到积极的榜样作用。

The amount and quality of food eaten are important factors that affect the growth and development in animals, as well as their ability to respond to environmental stressors. This project will investigate how nutrition affects the response to nutritional and environmental stress during early life stages, and how these varied responses affect developmental timing and future fitness. The investigators will focus their studies on amphibian tadpoles because they are easy to study in the field and the laboratory, and because the physiological mechanisms involved in development in tadpoles and mammalian fetuses are similar. The investigators expect that physiological factors that vary with nutritive condition (neuropeptide Y and leptin) will alter the sensitivity of the stress axis at the molecular level in the brain, such that tadpoles in better condition have more robust responses to environmental stressors and have greater growth and survival probabilities throughout life than tadpoles in poor condition. The findings from this research will increase our understanding of how nutritional condition interacts with stress during early development to alter the timing of metamorphosis, and may relate to the ways these factors affect the timing of other life history transitions, such as birth or puberty. In addition, this project will relate the experience of stress during early development to the increased threat of health problems and survival during later life stages. The project will also have a great impact on science education because undergraduate students will primarily conduct the experiments and analyses, thereby providing excellent training for graduate programs in ecology or biomedical research. This project will also involve the training of a post-doctoral student, who will be able to extend their research and teaching skills, and serve as a positive role model to undergraduates who are not familiar with the experience of graduate-level science education.