School of Biological Sciences, Illinois State University, Normal, IL 61790-4120, United States; Illinois Department of Natural Resources, Springfield, IL 62702, United States.
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996-0230, United States.
Physiol Behav. 2019 Oct 1;209:112614. doi: 10.1016/j.physbeh.2019.112614. Epub 2019 Jul 10.
Steroids play an integral role in orchestrating embryonic development, and they can affect a suite of phenotypic traits, including learning and behavior. Endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) can alter steroid-dependent phenotypic traits during embryonic development. Bisphenol-A (BPA) is an EDC that disrupts the action of estrogen, and recent work indicates that BPA can affect learning and behavior similarly to estrogen. We exposed red-eared slider turtle (Trachemys scripta) eggs to BPA during embryonic development and tested hatchlings for effects on learning and behavior in modified T-mazes over the course of two weeks. We found that behavioral patterns changed within a day and over the course of the experiment, but we found no effect of BPA treatment. Further, we found that hatchling turtles were highly consistent in their behaviors. These behaviors varied among individuals, suggesting that there are discrete behavioral types in T. scripta hatchlings. The highly repetitive nature of behaviors in the hatchlings might explain the innate biases that we observed and warrants further study.
类固醇在胚胎发育的协调中起着不可或缺的作用，它们可以影响一系列表型特征，包括学习和行为。内分泌干扰化合物（EDCs）可以在胚胎发育过程中改变类固醇依赖性表型特征。双酚 A（BPA）是一种内分泌干扰物，它会破坏雌激素的作用，最近的研究表明，BPA 可以像雌激素一样影响学习和行为。我们在胚胎发育过程中向红耳龟（Trachemys scripta）卵中暴露于 BPA，并在两周的时间内使用改良的 T 迷宫测试幼龟的学习和行为。我们发现行为模式在一天内和实验过程中发生了变化，但没有发现 BPA 处理的影响。此外，我们发现幼龟在行为上高度一致。这些行为在个体之间存在差异，表明 T. scripta 幼龟存在离散的行为类型。幼龟行为的高度重复性可能解释了我们观察到的内在偏见，值得进一步研究。
