McGhee Katie E, Bell Alison M
School of Integrative Biology, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801, USA Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Downing St., Cambridge CB2 3EJ, UK
School of Integrative Biology, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
Proc Biol Sci. 2014 Nov 7;281(1794):20141146. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2014.1146.
In many animals, including humans, interactions with caring parents can have long-lasting effects on offspring sensitivity to stressors. However, whether these parental effects impact offspring fitness in nature is often unclear. In addition, despite evidence that maternal care can influence offspring behaviour via epigenetic alterations to the genome, it remains unclear whether paternal care has similar effects. Here, we show in three-spined sticklebacks, a fish in which fathers are the sole provider of offspring care, that the direct care provided by fathers affects offspring anxiety and the potential for epigenetic alterations to the offspring genome. We find that families are differentially vulnerable to early stress and fathers can compensate for this differential sensitivity with the quality of their care. This variation in paternal care is also linked to the expression in offspring brains of a DNA methyltransferase (Dnmt3a) responsible for de novo methylation. We show that these paternal effects are potentially adaptive and anxious offspring are unlikely to survive an encounter with a predator. By supplying offspring care, fathers reduce offspring anxiety thereby increasing the survival of their offspring-not in the traditional sense through resource provisioning but through an epigenetic effect on offspring behavioural development.
在包括人类在内的许多动物中，与关爱子女的父母的互动会对后代对应激源的敏感性产生持久影响。然而，这些亲代效应在自然环境中是否会影响后代的适应性往往并不明确。此外，尽管有证据表明母性关怀可通过基因组的表观遗传改变影响后代行为，但父性关怀是否有类似作用仍不清楚。在此，我们以三刺鱼（一种由父亲独自承担后代养育责任的鱼类）为研究对象，发现父亲提供的直接照料会影响后代的焦虑情绪以及后代基因组发生表观遗传改变的可能性。我们发现不同的家庭对早期应激的易感性存在差异，而父亲可以通过其照料质量来弥补这种差异敏感性。父性照料的这种差异也与负责从头甲基化的DNA甲基转移酶（Dnmt3a）在后代大脑中的表达有关。我们表明，这些父性效应可能具有适应性，焦虑的后代在遭遇捕食者时不太可能存活。通过提供后代照料，父亲降低了后代的焦虑情绪，从而提高了其后代的存活率——并非传统意义上通过提供资源，而是通过对后代行为发育的表观遗传效应。
