Mediation of optimal reproductive decisions by maternal stress

母亲压力对最佳生殖决策的调节

• 批准号: RGPIN-2015-06724
• 负责人: Love, Oliver
• 金额: $ 3.57万
• 依托单位: University of Windsor
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2019-01-01 至 2020-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=689782
• 关键词: Mediation; optimal; reproductive; decisions; maternal

Population and ecosystem health are driven by the capacity of individuals to maximize their fitness under continuously changing environmental conditions. Since physiological function directly mediates the relationship of the organism to its environment, physiological traits are useful to study as regulators of the life-history decisions and trade-offs that shape variation in fitness. However, despite much theoretical work predicting expected relationships between physiology and ecological or environmental processes, many physiological traits fail to show consistent individual-level variation, cannot be universally applied across diverse taxa, or are hard to experimentally manipulate in wild systems. Steroid hormones are now recognized to be critically involved in the adaptation and evolution of complex traits. Baseline levels of `stress' hormones are fantastic candidates for mediating investment decisions both within and among individuals since they regulate daily and seasonal energetic balance in vertebrates. Although recent work has focused on trying to link stress hormones directly to fitness, these studies often find equivocal results. Very few studies are designed to interpret more complex, but likely more biologically relevant, linkages between baseline stress hormones and fitness. The research program and associated projects outlined in this application are designed to answer some of these fundamental, and yet currently missing, questions. I am specifically going to test whether baseline stress hormones: i) integrate individual and environmental variability, ii) prepare individuals for the performance demands of energetically expensive life-history stages, iii) mediate adaptive investment decisions, and therefore fitness, and iv) modulate their trade-off and fitness effects via ecological and life-history level contexts. This type of mechanistic information is not only very important for basic exploratory scientific studies, but it is increasingly key and needed in applied research to increase the predictive power of how we expect individuals and populations breeding in sensitive ecosystems like the Arctic to fair and respond as they face increasingly numbers of human-induced stressors.**

人口和生态系统健康是由个人在不断变化的环境条件下最大化其适应性的能力所驱动的。由于生理功能直接介导了生物体与其环境的关系，因此生理特征可作为研究生命历史的决定和权衡塑造适应性变化的调节者。但是，尽管许多理论上的工作预测了生理学与生态或环境过程之间的预期关系，但许多生理特征未能表现出一致的个人水平变化，不能普遍应用在多样化的分类单元中，或者很难在野生系统中进行实验操纵。现在认为，类固醇激素与复杂性状的适应性和演变至关重要。 “压力”激素的基线水平是调解个人内部和个人之间的投资决策的绝佳候选者，因为它们调节了脊椎动物的日常和季节性能量平衡。尽管最近的工作重点是试图将压力激素直接与适应性联系起来，但这些研究经常发现模棱两可的结果。很少有研究被设计为解释更复杂的基线应力激素和适应性之间的联系更复杂，但可能在生物学上相关。本应用程序中概述的研究计划和相关项目旨在回答其中的一些基本，但目前缺少的问题。我要特别测试基线应力激素是否：i）整合个体和环境变异性，ii）为个人准备昂贵的寿命阶段的绩效要求，iii）介导适应性投资决策，因此适应性，iv）调节他们的权衡和健身效果，以生态和生活阶层的水平上下文。这种类型的机械信息不仅对于基本的探索性科学研究非常重要，而且在应用研究中越来越关键和需要，以提高我们期望北极等敏感生态系统中的个人和人群如何繁殖的预测能力公平，并在面对越来越多的人类诱导的压力方面做出反应。