Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The long-term goal of this program is to understand how metabolism, behaviour, and performance jointly evolve by estimating multivariate selection and quantitative genetics architecture. Over the next 5 years, we will continue progress towards this goal through addressing an evolutionary problem in urgent need of a resolution: the "paradox of stasis" (i.e., we are currently unable to reconcile the lack of phenotypic change observed in wild populations with predictions of evolutionary change). We will leverage 3 study systems that offer unique opportunities to tackle potential explanations for the mismatch between observed vs predicted responses to selection: 1) The "cryptic evolution" problem will be evaluated using data (38,000 pedigreed mice over 78 generations) from an artificial selection experiment on activity, in which a stasis is observed since generation 25. Although the replicated control and selected lines are supposedly evolving in a constant environment, there is a striking annual cycle in activity and body mass, which offers a unique opportunity to evaluate how changes in the environment may "mask" evolutionary changes. 2) The "incomplete fitness measures" problem will be evaluated in a laboratory population of Drosophila melanogaster adapted to a life cycle that facilitates comprehensive measures of lifetime reproductive fitness and several underlying components (e.g., viability vs fecundity). We will evaluate the extent to which trade-offs among fitness components lead to cases of apparent stasis when predictions are based on incomplete fitness measures. 3) The "missing trait" problem will be evaluated in wild population of individually marked white-footed mice. The originality of this monitoring program resides in the fact that we routinely measure various traits that are putatively under more direct selection than morphological traits that form the bulk of reported cases of stasis. By applying the multivariate breeder's equation to suites of morphological, metabolic, behavioural, and performance traits, we will be able to compare the mismatch across trait categories. This proposal heeds to recent calls to diversify the type of traits and model organisms that are studied from a "stasis" perspective. A secondary theme that runs through this work is the correlated evolution of metabolism, behaviour, and performance, which in itself generates unique sets of questions concerning topics of current interest and importance and for which we have a strong track record of contributions. This multidisciplinary research program is based on a variety of approaches (e.g., capture-mark-recapture, experimental evolution) and study models in the lab and in the field. It will offer a unique environment for training young scientists in a wide range of disciplines with different techniques that are valuable for jobs in academia, environmental consultancy, veterinary sciences, wildlife biology, conservation, nature museums, and parks.