Collaborative Research: Does responding to stressors prime greater resilience? Testing the long-term effects of challenges on behavior, physiology, epigenetic state, and fitness.

当面临重大挑战时--恶劣天气、捕食者的攻击、伤害--生物体会发起协调的生理和行为应激反应。这种反应对于生存和从迫在眉睫的威胁中恢复至关重要。这个项目将测试激活压力反应系统是否有另一个被忽视的好处，它在更长的时间尺度上运行：为系统做好准备，以便更好地应对未来的挑战。协调实验将解决环境挑战何时以及如何增强对未来挑战的适应能力等基本问题，并研究这些影响是否会代代相传。这项研究还将调整和改进新开发的传感器技术，使之能够对自由生活的动物的心率进行非侵入性监测--这一工具可能会在各个领域产生相当大的进步。更全面地了解挑战的挥之不去的影响，对于包括保护和人类健康在内的其他领域也将是有价值的。此外，该团队将领导一项职业发展计划，将实地研究实习与实验室和课堂技能发展计划相结合，该计划针对对STEM领域职业感兴趣的代表不足的群体的学生。这一机会旨在促进来自一所小型文理学院和一所大型研究密集型大学的学生之间的互动。该项目将检验这样一种假设，即成年后经历的短暂挑战会带来对未来挑战更强的韧性或健壮性，即返回或保持稳定状态的能力。研究将使用树燕(Tachycineta Biolor)的长期研究种群，在该种群中，可以从自由生活的个体那里收集大规模的行为和生理数据。在研究的第一年，成年女性将面临生态相关的挑战或模拟的糖皮质激素应激反应。在接下来的一年(S)，将测量各种表型性状，以及与上下文相关的表现和适应能力。这项研究设计将能够比较暴露于挑战的直接影响与暴露于对该挑战的反应的调解人的影响。这些实验还将揭示应激源对行为、生理和健康的长期影响是否由糖皮质激素和糖皮质激素诱导的DNA甲基化变化介导。这项研究还将测试父母的暴露历史是否会影响挑战后一年(S)产生的后代的表型和健康状况。通过将自由生活种群中的目标实验与行为、生理和表观遗传学评估的综合方法相结合，该项目将为开发和修订应激和表型可塑性的概念模型提供重要的见解。它还将拓宽我们对行为机制的理解，有机体是如何被环境塑造的，以及亚有机体反应如何有助于有机体的弹性和健壮性。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

When faced with a major challenge – severe weather, the attack of a predator, an injury – organisms mount a coordinated physiological and behavioral stress response. This response can be vital for surviving and recovering from immediate threats. This project will test whether activating the stress response system has another overlooked benefit that operates over much longer time-scales: priming the system to respond better to future challenges. Coordinated experiments will address fundamental questions about when and how environmental challenges prime greater resilience to future challenges, and examine whether those effects persist across generations. This study will also adapt and refine newly developed sensor technology that enables non-invasive monitoring of heart rate in free-living animals – a tool that could yield considerable advances across fields. A more comprehensive understanding of the lingering impacts of challenges will also be valuable for other fields, including conservation and human health. Additionally, the team will lead a career development program that combines a field research internship – in which students participate in addressing the research objectives outlined in this proposal – with a laboratory- and classroom-based skills development program for students from underrepresented groups who are interested in careers in STEM fields. This opportunity is designed to foster interactions among students from a small liberal arts college and from a large research-intensive university.This project will test the hypothesis that transient challenges experienced in adulthood prime greater resilience or robustness to future challenges, defined as the ability to return to or maintain a stable state. Research will use a long-term study population of tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) in which large-scale behavioral and physiological data can be collected from free-living individuals. In the first year of study adult females will be exposed to either an ecologically relevant challenge or a simulated glucocorticoid stress response. In the following year(s) a diversity of phenotypic traits, and context-dependent performance and fitness, will be measured. This study design will enable comparison of the direct effects of exposure to a challenge with the effects of exposure to a mediator of the response to that challenge. These experiments will also reveal whether the long-term effects of stressors on behavior, physiology, and fitness are mediated by glucocorticoids and by glucocorticoid-induced changes in DNA methylation. This research will also test whether parental exposure history carries over to affect the phenotype and fitness of offspring produced in the year(s) after the challenge. By combining targeted experiments in a free-living population with integrative methods of behavioral, physiological, and epigenetic assessment this project will provide insights important for developing and revising conceptual models of stress and phenotypic plasticity. It will also broaden our understanding of the mechanisms of behavior, how organisms are shaped by their environments, and how sub-organismal responses contribute to organismal resilience and robustness.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.