CAREER: The role of maternal behavior in driving bidirectional interactions between infectious diseases and offspring immune phenotype.

孩子从父母那里继承DNA，这决定了无数的特征，比如头发的颜色、身高，以及患慢性病的可能性。除了这些基因贡献外，父母还通过他们的行为和生理来塑造他们的后代，这被称为父母效应。例如，暴露在传染病中会导致母亲将抗体传递给孩子，保护他们免受病原体的侵害。很少有人了解传染病是如何通过改变亲代行为来塑造后代对病原体的反应的，然而亲代行为是后代发育环境的关键决定因素。鸟类是一个很好的研究生物，可以理解疾病对后代的影响，这种影响是通过亲代行为的变化介导的，因为亲代和后代的生理在产卵后分离。一旦产下蛋，父母的孵化行为塑造了鸟类胚胎发育环境的一个重要因素：温度。鸟类也是重要的研究生物，因为它们携带与野生动物、农业和人类有关的病原体。研究者将研究疾病对禽类亲代抚育行为和后代对疾病反应的影响，包括疾病传播的可能性。利用这些数据，研究者的实验室将开发理论模型，以探索亲代效应对流行病规模和持续时间以及病原体毒力的贡献。此外，拟议的教育努力将通过与科学妇女协会和一所区域性历史黑人大学合作，提供专业发展和研究机会，帮助保留STEM学术界代表性不足的群体。该项目跨越规模和学科，探索疾病生态学中的一个重要问题：非基因组遗传对宿主-病原体动力学有多重要？本文研究的亲代效应发生在早期发育的不同阶段，这将揭示亲代效应是如何通过亲代行为与亲代生理（例如，母体抗体）的变化相互作用来塑造后代的免疫表型的，并增加我们对免疫表型对可变的产前和产后环境的可塑性的理解。研究人员将使用一个鸟类模型系统来验证一个总体假设，即病原体环境影响亲代抚育行为和生殖投资，从而在发育环境中产生变异，从而影响后代的疾病结果，这对种群水平的疾病动态和病原体进化至关重要。鸟类是探索这些问题的一个很好的模型系统，因为鸟类亲代行为、发育环境（如孵化温度）和后代免疫表型之间存在明确的联系。经验数据将用于开发理论模型，研究复杂的跨尺度相互作用，这些相互作用会产生动态反馈，从而影响宿主繁殖、宿主表型（疾病结果和传播可能性）、病原体表型（生长和繁殖），并最终影响流行病动态。这项研究也将建立我们对早期热环境对后代疾病易感性的重要性的理解。该奖项由综合生态生理学和共生、防御和自我识别项目共同资助，该项目隶属于综合有机体系统部门的生理和结构系统集群和行为系统集群。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。

Children inherit DNA from their parents, and this shapes innumerable traits, like hair color, height, and their likelihood of developing chronic illnesses. In addition to these genomic contributions, parents also shape their offspring through their behavior and physiology, which are referred to as parental effects. For instance, exposure to infectious diseases can cause mothers to pass antibodies to their young that protect them from pathogens. Much less understood is how infectious diseases shape offspring responses to pathogens through changes in parental behavior, yet parental behavior is a key determinant of their offspring’s developmental environment. Birds represent an excellent study organism for understanding the effects of disease on offspring disease outcomes that are mediated through shifts in parental behavior, because the physiology of the parent and offspring become separated after egg-laying. Once eggs are laid, parental incubation behavior shapes a vital element of the avian embryonic developmental environment: temperature. Birds are also important study organisms because they harbor pathogens relevant to wildlife, agriculture, and humans. The investigator will study the effects of disease on avian parental care behaviors and subsequent offspring responses to disease, including likelihood of disease transmission. Using these data, the investigator’s lab will develop theoretical models to explore the contributions of parental effects to epidemic size and duration, and pathogen virulence. In addition, proposed educational efforts will help to retain underrepresented groups in STEM academia by providing professional development and research opportunities in partnership with the Association for Women in Science and a regional Historically Black University.This project crosses scales and disciplines to explore an important question in disease ecology: how important is non-genomic inheritance to host-pathogen dynamics? The parental effects examined herein occur at different stages of early development, which will reveal how parental effects mediated through shifts in parental behavior vs. parental physiology (e.g., maternal antibodies) interact to shape offspring immune phenotypes, and increase our understanding of the plasticity of immune phenotypes to variable pre- and postnatal environments. The researchers will use an avian model system to test the overarching hypothesis that the pathogen environment shapes parental care behaviors and reproductive investment creating variation in the developmental environment to affect offspring disease outcomes important to population-level disease dynamics and pathogen evolution. Birds are an excellent model system to explore these questions because there is a clear link between avian parental behavior, the developmental environment (e.g., incubation temperature), and offspring immune phenotype. Empirical data will be used to develop theoretical models examining complex cross-scale interactions that result in dynamic feedbacks to shape host reproduction, host phenotype (disease outcomes and transmission likelihood), pathogen phenotype (growth and reproduction), and ultimately, epidemic dynamics. This research also will build our understanding of the importance of the early thermal environment to offspring disease susceptibility. This award was co-funded by the Integrative Ecological Physiology and the Symbiosis, Defense and Self-recognition programs in the Physiological and Structural Systems cluster and the Behavioral Systems cluster within the Division of Integrative Organismal Systems.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.