Collaborative Research: Understanding the Evolution of Diet Breadth through Ecoimmunology

合作研究：通过生态免疫学了解饮食广度的演变

• 批准号: 1456338
• 负责人: M. Deane Bowers
• 金额: $ 33.19万
• 依托单位: University of Colorado at Boulder
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-04-01 至 2020-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1456338&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Understanding; Evolution; Diet

Human commerce and other anthropogenic activities have caused widespread changes in the geographic ranges of species, affecting how species interact within their communities. Since plant-feeding insects represent a large part of Earth's terrestrial biomass, understanding the factors that influence them to change their diets is central to predicting if and how newly organized ecosystems will function. Ecoimmunology is an emerging discipline that highlights the role of the immune system in species interactions and the evolution of life history traits. Although research in plant-insect interactions has long recognized that the range of plant species eaten by insects is shaped not only by characteristics of the plants, but also by enemies such as predators and parasites, the role played by immunological defense in determining dietary breadth is a new area of study. This research explores the hypothesis that resistance to pathogens attained via enhanced immunity can affect the likelihood of incorporating new plant species into insect herbivore diets. To test this hypothesis, researchers will combine approaches from ecoimmunology, chemical ecology and microbiology, using a model system of four butterfly species, all of which have incorporated the introduced plant, Plantago lanceolata (Plantaginaceae), into their diets. Researchers will assess whether the use of the introduced plant is associated with altered disease risk by quantifying parasitism rates and environmental levels of two common pathogens in different populations of each butterfly species that vary in their use of P. lanceolata. In the laboratory, genetic stock from these populations will be used to compare the immunological response to microbial pathogens and simulated parasitism among caterpillars feeding on P. lanceolata and ancestral host plant species. Researchers will experimentally investigate the interplay between diet, the sequestration of plant chemicals, and the bacteria residing in the insect gut by measuring the immune response when these factors have been manipulated. Finally, they will test whether larval infection history affects which plants are chosen by ovipositing females, or whether shifts to P. lanceolata reflect selection on innate host preference.

人类商业和其他人为活动导致物种地理范围的广泛变化，影响物种在其社区中的相互作用。由于饲养植物的昆虫代表了地球陆地生物量的很大一部分，因此了解影响它们改变饮食的因素对于预测新组织的生态系统是否以及如何发挥作用至关重要。生态免疫学是一门新兴的学科，强调了免疫系统在物种相互作用和生活历史特征的进化中的作用。尽管长期以来，在植物侵入相互作用中进行的研究已经认识到，昆虫食用的植物物种的范围不仅是由植物的特征，而且是诸如捕食者和寄生虫等敌人的影响，但免疫学辩护在确定饮食广度上所起的作用是一个新的研究领域。这项研究探讨了以下假设：通过增强免疫力获得的对病原体的抵抗会影响将新植物物种纳入昆虫草食动物饮食的可能性。为了检验这一假设，研究人员将使用四种蝴蝶物种的模型系统将生态免疫学，化学生态学和微生物学的方法结合在一起，所有这些系统都将引入的植物Plantago lanceolata（Plantaginaceae）结合到饮食中。研究人员将通过量化寄生虫率和环境水平的改变，在每种蝴蝶种群的不同种群中，它们在使用lanceolata的不同种群中，是否与疾病风险改变有关。在实验室中，这些人群的遗传库存将用于比较对微生物病原体的免疫反应和对兰氏假单胞菌和祖先宿主植物物种的毛毛虫的模拟寄生虫。研究人员将通过测量操纵这些因素时测量免疫反应，从而实验研究饮食，植物化学物质的隔离和驻留在昆虫肠道中的细菌之间的相互作用。最后，他们将测试幼虫感染史是否会影响雌性选择哪些植物，或者转移到lanceolata的植物是否反映了对先天宿主偏好的选择。