Dietary tuning of poison frog tadpole behavior and development

毒蛙是有毒的，因为它们能够从饮食中摄取生物碱并进行生物积累，这种毒性与它们明显的颜色有关，称为警戒。在一种毒蛙（Ranitomeya imitator）中，蝌蚪由它们的母亲喂养，母亲定期存款含有未受精的卵供它们食用。动物的行为是由中枢神经系统协调的，并受到早期生活饮食的影响。为了研究摄食频率和生物碱消耗量如何影响毒蛙的发育和行为，我提出了一个不同实验的项目：i）进行与3D免疫组织化学（iDISCO）偶联的行为测定，以鉴定在对照处理下蝌蚪中乞讨和攻击行为的神经回路的差异，禁食疗法（喂食相同数量但频率较低）和生物碱处理（喂食相同的量和频率，但添加生物碱反式-十氢喹啉）; ii）评估这些处理如何影响蝌蚪的代谢率和发育，以及它们是否对幼蝌蚪的代谢率和行为具有遗留效应; iii）测试青少年这些行为的强度是否与下丘脑中相关神经肽和受体的表达相关。这项工作将建立一个基线，以研究毒蛙的父母照顾的演变，并将开拓性地建立一个神经和分子基础，以调查警戒和警戒行为的演变。

Poison frogs are toxic due to alkaloids they are able to take up from the diet and bioaccumulate, and this toxicity correlates to their conspicuous coloration, known as aposematism. In a dendrobatid poison frog, Ranitomeya imitator, tadpoles are fed by their mothers, who periodically deposit alkaloid-containing unfertilized eggs for their consumption. Animal behaviors are coordinated by the central nervous system and influenced by early life diet. With the aim to investigate how feeding frequency and alkaloid consumption influence the development and behavior of poison frogs, I propose a project with different experiments: i) to conduct behavioral assays coupled to 3D immunohistochemistry (iDISCO) to identify differences in the neural circuitry for begging and aggressive behaviors in tadpoles under a control treatment, a fasting treatment (fed the same quantity but less frequently) and an alkaloid treatment (fed the same quantity and frequency but adding the alkaloid trans-Decahydroquinoline); ii) to evaluate how these treatments affect tadpoles’ metabolic rate and development, and if they have a carry-over effect on the juvenile metabolic rate and behavior; iii) to test if the intensity of these behaviors in juveniles is correlated to the expression of pertinent neuropeptides and receptors in the hypothalamus. This work will set a baseline to study the evolution of parental care in poison frogs and will pioneer in setting a neural and molecular basis to investigate the evolution of aposematism and aposematic behavior.