The Expression and Impact of Parent-offspring Conflict in Natural Populations of Least Killifish

Florida State University, Tallahassee FL

Investigators

Abstract

When mothers provide nutrition for offspring throughout gestation, offspring and mother have conflicting interests. Mothers ought to distribute nutrition evenly to all offspring, but each offspring ought to coerce as much nutrition as possible for itself. This project will examine whether different levels of conflict, produced by different levels of relatedness within a mother?s brood, can account for the vastly different levels of maternal investment in offspring seen in nature and for different patterns of gene expression during gestation in different populations. The project will also examine whether this conflict can be ameliorated by enhancing the nutrition available to mothers, and whether this conflict accounts for the high number of inviable embryos observed in crosses between individuals from different populations. The conflicting interests of mothers and offspring are postulated to be responsible for features such as the mammalian placenta, genetic imprinting, and the rapid diversification of live-bearing animals. This project will address several of these postulated connections in the same system and thereby illuminate whether one process can offer a unifying explanation for many seemingly disparate features in nature. It will also provide training opportunities for high schoolers, teachers, undergraduates, and a postdoctoral fellow, including groups under-represented in science.