CAREER: Stress-mediated maternal effects as a facilitator of organismal resilience in fluctuating environments: from mechanisms to function

人类和动物都经历着周围环境的变化。对于野生动物来说，不能对这些环境波动做出适当的反应是一种生死攸关的情况。迄今为止，大多数关于动物如何应对不断变化的环境的研究都是理论练习。该项目将整合进化生物学、生态学和动物生理学的概念，以批判性地评估野生动物如何适应环境的波动。该研究将以野生北美红松鼠为实验对象，评估母体压力水平的升高是否会促使怀孕的雌性红松鼠改变其后代的生理、行为和生殖特征，从而使它们能够更好地在变化的环境中生存。从更广泛的角度来看，这将有助于理解早期生活压力如何改变哺乳动物后代的生理和行为，以及这些影响是否持久；这两个问题都是人类生物医学研究中的关键问题。该项目的教育活动包括制定新的评估方法来评估行为科学本科教学的有效性，设计新的一年级动物行为学本科课程，以增加STEM管道中代表性不足群体的本科生的保留率，开发一门新的研究生课程，整合进化生物学和神经科学的概念，以更好地理解男女差异的生物学和文化根源。该项目还将通过为高中生、本科生和研究生提供新的培训机会，并为来自代表性不足群体的小学生开展新的课外活动，吸引公共利益相关者参与。与生长、繁殖和生存相关的行为和特征（生活史特征）的可塑性可能使动物在不断变化的环境中持续存在。亲本效应是一种跨代表型可塑性，亲本表型或环境诱导后代特征的可塑性。亲代效应可以使后代表型在特定环境的预期中进行适应性调整。或者，由亲代效应引起的后代生理上的长期变化可能抑制对变化环境的适应性反应。该项目的主要目的是确定亲代效应为什么以及如何协调野生北美红松鼠（Tamiasciurus hudsonicus）后代表型的变化，并确定它们是否促进或限制对不断变化的环境的适应。该项目将利用一系列实地实验和生理特征的实验室测量来解决关于亲代效应的三个具体知识缺口：亲代效应的机制，它们在自然界的进化后果，以及这些后果如何在不同环境和性别之间变化。本研究将扩大学生多层次的教育机会，并开发一种新的评估方法来跟踪本科生动物行为教育的有效性。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Humans and animals alike experience changes in their surroundings. For wild animals, a failure to respond appropriately to those environmental fluctuations is a life or death situation. To date, most research on how animals can cope with changing environments has been a theoretical exercise. This project will integrate concepts from evolutionary biology, ecology, and animal physiology to critically evaluate how wild animals can adapt to fluctuations in their environment. It will use an experimental approach with wild North American red squirrels to evaluate if elevations in maternal stress levels enable pregnant females to induce changes in the physiology, behavior, and reproductive characteristics of offspring that enable them to better survive altered environments. From a broader perspective, this will aid the understanding of how early life stress can alter the physiology and behavior of mammalian offspring and if these effects are long-lasting; both of these are crucial questions in biomedical studies of humans. The educational activities of the project include crafting novel assessment methods to evaluate the effectiveness of undergraduate teaching in the behavioral sciences, the design of a new first-year undergraduate course in animal behavior to increase the retention of undergraduate students from underrepresented groups in the STEM pipeline, and development of a new graduate course that integrates concepts from evolutionary biology and neuroscience to better understand the biological and cultural origins of differences between females and males. The project will also engage public stakeholders by providing new training opportunities for high school, undergraduate, and graduate students and developing new after-school activities for elementary-aged students from underrepresented groups.Plasticity in behavior and characteristics associated with growth, reproduction, and survival (life history traits) may allow animals to persist through changing environments. Parental effects are a type of trans-generational phenotypic plasticity where the parental phenotype or environment induces plasticity of offspring characteristics. Parental effects could allow adaptive adjustments in offspring phenotype in anticipation of specific environments. Alternatively, the long-lasting changes in offspring physiology caused by parental effects could inhibit adaptive responses to changing environments. The main aim of this project is to identify why and how parental effects orchestrate changes in offspring phenotypes in wild North American red squirrels (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus) and determine whether they facilitate or constrain adaptation to changing environments. This project will use a series of field experiments combined with laboratory measures of physiological characteristics to address three specific knowledge gaps about parental effects: the mechanisms responsible for parental effects, their evolutionary consequences in nature, and how these consequences vary across environments and the sexes. This work will expand educational opportunities for students at multiple levels and develop a novel assessment method for tracking the effectiveness of animal behavior education for undergraduates.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.