Details of Award
NERC Reference : NE/J018937/1
How are life history and reproductive behaviour coordinated?
Fellowship Award
- Fellow:
- Dr S Wigby, University of Oxford, Zoology
- Grant held at:
- University of Oxford, Zoology
- Science Area:
- Terrestrial
- Overall Classification:
- Terrestrial
- ENRIs:
- Biodiversity
- Science Topics:
- Animal & human physiology
- Ageing
- Animal behaviour
- Sexual selection
- Behavioural Ecology
- Evolution & populations
- Adaptation
- Population Genetics/Evolution
- Abstract:
- Why do we age? In humans, as in most animals, the ability to maintain a healthy body, produce offspring and fight disease declines as we get older. This is a puzzling phenomenon. An animal that could carry on mating and reproducing forever would be at an evolutionary advantage because it would maximise its contribution of genes to the next generation. However, the vast majority of animals can't do this. The natural world shows us that, all else being equal, there is usually a negative relationship between longevity and reproduction: animals tend to be either fast reproducers or long-lived. This is thought to be because resources are limited, and animals can either invest the available resources in maintaining their body for a long life or they can invest them in lots of mating and offspring production - but not both. Alternatively, the efforts of mating and producing offspring might cause irreversible damage to the body that ultimately leads to its decline. Either way, evolutionary theories predict that eternal life and high rates of fecundity should be impossible. Recent reports of genetic manipulations that increase lifespan without reducing reproduction have therefore generated much interest. The research, conducted in invertebrate organisms such as the nematode worm and the fruit fly, suggests that different processes might control lifespan and reproduction. If this were true, then evolutionary theory would face a major challenge. However, the long-lived, high fecundity worms and flies were genetically modified and experimented upon in the laboratory, an environment that lacks the stresses and pressures of the natural world. Furthermore, experiments are often carried out under specific sexual conditions: either where there is little or no opportunity to mate, or where mating is unlimited. This complicates matters because sexual activity per se has a large effect on lifespan: lots of mating results in early death in these species. My recent work has shown that some genetic modifications that increase the lifespan of female fruit flies, also makes them less willing to mate with males. Thus, if researchers do not control or measure the sexual activity of animals in their experiments, they could mistakenly attribute increased lifespan to the direct effect of genetic manipulations rather than long-life as a result of less sexual activity. Moreover, we don't know how differences in sexual activity affects lifespan in long-lived flies, or whether sex-specific behaviour impacts lifespan. The aim of my project is to investigate this relationship between lifespan and reproductive behaviour in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, to address the problems posed above. Firstly, the work will identify the genetic links between the regulation of lifespan and the regulation of sexual behaviour in males and females, to find out how the genetic regulation of lifespan affects sexual activity as flies age, and thus whether it is possible for flies to be sexually active for longer. Secondly I will test whether the number of mating opportunities that males and females experience affects the genetic control of lifespan (i.e. how 'robust' long-lived mutants are to different levels of reproductive activity). Finally I will test whether sex-specific behaviours affect lifespan and can explain differences in longevity between the sexes. The results of these experiments will give us a clear picture of the relationship between sex and lifespan: how manipulating lifespan affects sexual behaviour and how changing sexual behaviour affects lifespan. This will help us understand how animals maximise their reproductive lifespan and why sex seems to have an inevitable association with senescence.
- NERC Reference:
- NE/J018937/1
- Grant Stage:
- Completed
- Scheme:
- Postdoctoral Fellow (FEC)
- Grant Status:
- Closed
- Programme:
- Postdoctoral Fellowship
This fellowship award has a total value of £298,635
FDAB - Financial Details (Award breakdown by headings)
| DI - Other Costs | Indirect - Indirect Costs | DA - Estate Costs | DI - Staff | DA - Other Directly Allocated | DI - T&S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £43,467 | £100,962 | £29,259 | £117,338 | £2,417 | £5,193 |
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