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

合作研究：对压力源的反应是否会增强复原力？

• 批准号: 2128338
• 负责人: Daniel Ardia
• 金额: $ 17.89万
• 依托单位: Franklin and Marshall College
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-02-01 至 2026-01-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2128338&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Does; responding; stressors

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.

当面临重大挑战时——恶劣的天气、捕食者的攻击、受伤——生物体会产生协调的生理和行为压力反应，这种反应对于从直接威胁中生存和恢复至关重要。该项目将测试是否激活压力。响应系统还有另一个在更长的时间范围内运行的被忽视的好处：协调的实验将解决有关环境挑战何时以及如何增强应对未来挑战的能力的基本问题，并检查这些影响是否持续存在。这项研究也将适应并跨越几代人。完善新开发的传感器技术，能够对自由生活的动物进行非侵入性心率监测，这种工具可以在各个领域取得重大进展，更全面地了解挑战的持久影响对于包括保护在内的其他领域也很有价值。此外，该团队将领导一项职业发展计划，该计划将实地研究实习（学生参与实现本提案中概述的研究目标）与针对代表性不足的学生的基于实验室和课堂的技能发展计划相结合。对 STEM 领域的职业感兴趣的群体。机会旨在促进来自小型文理学院和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个假设，即成年期经历的短暂挑战会增强对未来挑战的适应力或稳健性，定义为回归的能力研究将使用树燕（Tachycineta bicolor）的长期研究群体，在研究的第一年，可以从自由生活的个体中收集大规模的行为和生理数据。面临生态相关的挑战或在接下来的几年中，将测量模拟的糖皮质激素应激反应，以及与环境相关的表现和健康状况，从而比较暴露于挑战的直接影响。这些实验还将揭示压力源对行为、生理和健康的长期影响是否是由糖皮质激素和糖皮质激素引起的 DNA 变化介导的。这项研究还将通过在自由生活的群体中进行有针对性的实验与行为、生理、该项目将为开发和修改压力和表型可塑性的概念模型提供重要的见解，还将拓宽我们对行为机制、生物体如何被环境塑造以及亚生物体反应如何促进生物体的理解。复原力和复原力该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。