Centre for Ecology and Conservation, University of Exeter (Penryn Campus), Penryn, United Kingdom.
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, United States.
Elife. 2022 Feb 11;11:e67126. doi: 10.7554/eLife.67126.
The vertebrate stress response comprises a suite of behavioural and physiological traits that must be functionally integrated to ensure organisms cope adaptively with acute stressors. Natural selection should favour functional integration, leading to a prediction of genetic integration of these traits. Despite the implications of such genetic integration for our understanding of human and animal health, as well as evolutionary responses to natural and anthropogenic stressors, formal quantitative genetic tests of this prediction are lacking. Here, we demonstrate that acute stress response components in Trinidadian guppies are both heritable and integrated on the major axis of genetic covariation. This integration could either facilitate or constrain evolutionary responses to selection, depending upon the alignment of selection with this axis. Such integration also suggests artificial selection on the genetically correlated behavioural responses to stress could offer a viable non-invasive route to the improvement of health and welfare in captive animal populations.
脊椎动物的应激反应包括一系列行为和生理特征，这些特征必须进行功能整合，以确保生物体能够适应急性应激源。自然选择应该有利于功能整合，从而预测这些特征的遗传整合。尽管这种遗传整合对我们理解人类和动物的健康以及对自然和人为应激源的进化反应具有重要意义，但目前缺乏对这一预测的正式定量遗传测试。在这里，我们证明了特立尼达鳉鱼的急性应激反应成分既具有遗传性，又在主要的遗传协变轴上具有整合性。这种整合可能会促进或限制对选择的进化反应，这取决于选择与该轴的一致性。这种整合还表明，对与应激相关的遗传相关行为反应进行人工选择，可能是改善圈养动物种群健康和福利的一种可行的非侵入性途径。
