Successfully reproducing organisms have evolved mechanisms for optimal adaptation to their prevailing environment, and some organisms preferentially exhibit behaviors, such as stockpiling food, that allow them to survive extended food shortages. For example, hamsters prefer to increase food hoarding rather than food intake in response to famine. Animals with these adaptations are likely to have an evolutionary advantage, especially in environments where food is scarce. In rodents, neural circuits in the brain that control feeding behavior develop during the last half of gestation, making maternal nutrition crucial during late pregnancy. In fact, maternal energy availability during pregnancy directly influences the development of offspring neural and hormonal machinery. However, we know very little about the mechanisms responsible for these developmental changes, especially in food hoarding animals. This work will contribute to the broad understanding about the effects of maternal nutrition on neural and hormonal mechanisms that regulate feeding, providing insight into feeding strategies adopted by offspring in response to variations in predicted postnatal environment. The educational activities integrate research and teaching efforts, develop a new major program in Neuroscience and provide a resource website for information about the PI's research and teaching.
This project addresses fundamental questions essential for understanding how gestational nutrient availability affects offspring ingestive behavior. Ingestive behavior consists of two phases: 1) the appetitive phase, consisting of foraging and food hoarding, and 2) the consummatory phase consisting of actual food ingestion. The consummatory phase (food intake) is well studied in rats and mice. The appetitive phase, however, has received comparatively little attention, even though those behaviors are common to most animals including humans. Unlike rats and mice, hamsters use appetitive behaviors extensively in their ingestive behavioral repertoire, and they use information about internal and external sources (i.e. both body fat and food hoards) of metabolic fuels to maintain energy balance. In addition, hamsters prefer to increase food hoarding rather than food intake during energetic challenges to maintain homeostasis. Preliminary data from this model indicate that male hamsters exposed to gestational nutrient restriction have increased food intake and reduced food hoarding, along with increases in plasma insulin, abdominal fat and hypothalamic neuropeptide Y, while females appear to be largely unaffected. These unique sexually differentiated findings, along with the lack of previous attention to gestational programming of appetitive ingestive behaviors increase the likelihood that the proposed experiments will make significant contributions to the field of behavioral neuroendocrinology. The broader impacts of this project include enhanced undergraduate student mentoring in research, development of a new laboratory course that integrates peer review and publication components, resources for a new Neuroscience major with an integrated K-12 outreach and development of a website describing the curricular innovations and neuroscience research at both general and detailed levels
