measure for measure: female responses to the social and sexual environment.

我们以各种各样的方式对环境做出反应，通常是为了适应或变得更有竞争力——这种反应通常是有益的，尽管也可以以一种病态的方式表达，即所谓的“帮派”或“小伙子”文化。作为社会/性反应的一个例子，我们可能经常在不知情的情况下采用与我们交谈的人的语言模式或行为习惯来简化沟通。动物世界充满了类似的例子。群体中的雄性意识到，他们在竞争配偶和交配方面面临着潜在的更高风险。因此，这些雄性可能会更激烈地竞争交配，提升他们的求爱仪式，交配时间更长，在交配时转移更多的精子和射精蛋白质。这些影响已被证明有利于受生殖竞争影响的雄性，使它们能够在适当的时候增加对生殖的投资。我们的研究表明，雌性在对雄性、交配和性环境的反应上也表现出很大的差异。然而，对于这些反应的意义，我们几乎一无所知。与雄性不同，我们不知道对性环境做出反应的好处，也不知道对雌性后代的后果是什么。这一点尤其重要，因为父母的社会经验可以通过非遗传效应影响后代的表现。因此，母亲们或许能够让她们的后代为普遍存在的竞争环境做好准备。因此，我们得出结论，两性在对环境的反应中都能表现出相当大的可塑性，这为自然选择提供了大量的原材料。然而，所有这些基因变异的意义仍然是一个谜。此外，考虑到两性都可以表现出生殖可塑性（例如，在每次繁殖过程中投入多少），令人惊讶的是，我们还不知道这些影响对个体整体繁殖成功的总和贡献是多少。当交配双方在生育决策上意见一致时，“双伴侣可塑性”应该会提高整体的生育成功率。然而，如果存在冲突，就像经常发生的那样，那么双方所表达的可塑性的好处可能会相互抵消。所有这些想法以前从未被验证过。我们在这里提出了一个非常新颖的研究计划，以解决我们对女性性可塑性理解的巨大差距。我们将使用完全基因组测序的“同雌”系。这些提供了在我们将要进行的每个实验中测量遗传变异程度的潜力，并且在未来，确定与每个生殖特征相关的基因组区域，就像医学研究人员对特定疾病的基因进行测试一样。我们有三大目标：1。衡量表达生殖可塑性对女性的益处。为了发现雌性是否能发出信号，表明它们的雄性和雌性后代将会在可能的竞争环境中出现。为了发现男性和女性的可塑性反应是如何相互作用的。研究结果将有助于我们对男性和女性做出的生殖决定的基本理解。它们还将揭示雌性感知竞争并向后代发出竞争信号的机制。

We respond to our environments in all sorts of ways, generally to fit in or become more competitive - such responses are usually beneficial, though can also be expressed in a pathological manner as so-called 'gang' or 'lad' culture. As an example of a social / sexual response, we may often adopt the speech patterns or mannerisms of the people we are talking to in an unknowing effort to ease communication. The animal world is full of analogous examples. Males in groups perceive that they are under a potentially elevated risk of competition for mates and matings. Hence such males may compete more strongly for matings, elevate their courtship rituals, mate for longer and transfer more sperm and ejaculate proteins when they do mate. These effects have been shown to benefit males that are subject to reproductive competition by allowing them to increase their investment in reproduction when it is relevant to do so.Our work shows that females also show substantial variation in responses to males, mating and sexual context. However, virtually nothing is yet known about the significance of these responses. Unlike for males, we do not know the benefits of responding to the sexual environment, nor what the consequences are for the female's offspring. This is especially important as parental social experience can influence offspring performance through non-genetic effects. Hence mothers may be able to 'prepare' their offspring for the prevailing competitive environment.Hence, we conclude that both sexes can express considerable plasticity in responses to the environment, which offers much raw material upon which natural selection can act. Yet the significance of all this genetic variation remains a mystery.In addition, given that both sexes can exhibit reproductive plasticity (e.g. in how much investment to make in each reproductive episode) it is surprising that we don't yet know what the sum contribution of these effects is to an individual's overall reproductive success. When both mating partners are in agreement with one another over reproductive decisions, then '2 partner plasticity' should increase overall reproductive success. However, if there is conflict, as there often is, then the benefits of plasticity expressed by each partner may cancel each other out.All these ideas have never previously been tested.We propose here a highly novel research programme to tackle big gaps in our understanding of sexual plasticity in females. We will use fully genome-sequenced 'iso-female' lines. These offer the potential to measure the extent of genetic variation in each of the experiments we will conduct and, in the future, to pin down the genome regions associated with each reproductive character in much the same way as tests of genes 'for' specific diseases are conducted by medical researchers. We have 3 broad aims:1. To measure the benefits for females of expressing reproductive plasticity.2. To discover whether females can signal the likely competitive environment into which their male and female offspring will emerge.3. To discover how the plastic responses of male and females interact. The results will contribute significantly to our fundamental understanding of reproductive decisions made by males and females. They will also reveal the mechanisms by which females can sense competition and signal competitiveness to future generations.