You are what your mother eats: understanding mother-offspring interactions in tsetse vectors of disease.
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Bristol
Department Name: Biological Sciences
Abstract
How does maternal malnutrition impact offspring health? While this question has long been relevant
in the field of human public health, little is known about transgenerational effects of food stress and
its impact for offspring quality in disease vectors. This project will focus on the link between maternal
nutritional stress and offspring quality in an important vector, the tsetse fly. Tsetse transmit sleeping
sickness in humans and nagana in livestock, causing great societal and economic concern across subSaharan Africa. They are unusual disease vectors: females give birth to single, live offspring the same
size as the mother. Thus, understanding maternal investment in this species is key to predicting how
changes in their diet will impact tsetse populations and the risk of tsetse-borne disease. The student
will use cutting-edge methods of stable isotope marker tracing to follow the fate of macronutrients
(fat, proteins and lipids) from mothers to offspring in live-bearing tsetse. They will manipulate the diet
of tsetse by providing bloodmeals which mimic nutritionally stressed hosts, and compare how mothers
allocate nutrients across generations with those given control meals. They will also examine how such
allocation decisions depend on the quality of the diet offspring themselves experience. In tandem, the
student will analyse field samples collected in Zimbabwe to investigate how the levels of nutritional
stress in the laboratory reflect those observed in the wild. The student will also develop new
evolutionary and physiological models of how mothers adjust their allocation towards their own
survival or that of their offspring under food stress, and how this balance depends on conflict between
mothers and young. By collaborating with theoreticians in the University of Bristol and the South
African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis, the student will have the opportunity to
integrate these models into simulations to test how such maternal allocation shapes tsetse population
responses to environmental change under conditions of drought and malnutrition.
in the field of human public health, little is known about transgenerational effects of food stress and
its impact for offspring quality in disease vectors. This project will focus on the link between maternal
nutritional stress and offspring quality in an important vector, the tsetse fly. Tsetse transmit sleeping
sickness in humans and nagana in livestock, causing great societal and economic concern across subSaharan Africa. They are unusual disease vectors: females give birth to single, live offspring the same
size as the mother. Thus, understanding maternal investment in this species is key to predicting how
changes in their diet will impact tsetse populations and the risk of tsetse-borne disease. The student
will use cutting-edge methods of stable isotope marker tracing to follow the fate of macronutrients
(fat, proteins and lipids) from mothers to offspring in live-bearing tsetse. They will manipulate the diet
of tsetse by providing bloodmeals which mimic nutritionally stressed hosts, and compare how mothers
allocate nutrients across generations with those given control meals. They will also examine how such
allocation decisions depend on the quality of the diet offspring themselves experience. In tandem, the
student will analyse field samples collected in Zimbabwe to investigate how the levels of nutritional
stress in the laboratory reflect those observed in the wild. The student will also develop new
evolutionary and physiological models of how mothers adjust their allocation towards their own
survival or that of their offspring under food stress, and how this balance depends on conflict between
mothers and young. By collaborating with theoreticians in the University of Bristol and the South
African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis, the student will have the opportunity to
integrate these models into simulations to test how such maternal allocation shapes tsetse population
responses to environmental change under conditions of drought and malnutrition.
Organisations
Studentship Projects
| Project Reference | Relationship | Related To | Start | End | Student Name |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BB/M009122/1 | 01/10/2015 | 31/03/2024 | |||
| 2266363 | Studentship | BB/M009122/1 | 01/10/2019 | 30/09/2023 | Hester Weaving |
| Description | My main finding so far has been from a meta-analysis I published investigating the plasticity of insect critical thermal limits. Critical thermal limits are the upper and lower bound of temperature at which an organism can survive. These limits are plastic and can change through a period of acclimation at a non-lethal temperature. I found overall that the critical thermal limits of insects are not very plastic, particularly their upper thermal limits, which has worrying implications for climate change. |
| Exploitation Route | My meta-analysis highlights gaps in the literature where further research can be done, for example on the plasticity of holometabolous insects (non-metamorphosing). |
| Sectors | Agriculture, Food and Drink,Environment |
| Description | Bristol doctoral college travel grant |
| Amount | £500 (GBP) |
| Organisation | University of Bristol |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 07/2022 |
| End | 08/2022 |
| Description | ESEB Special Topics Network |
| Amount | € 350 (EUR) |
| Organisation | European Society for Evolutionary Biology |
| Sector | Learned Society |
| Country | Germany |
| Start | 07/2022 |
| End | 08/2022 |
| Description | Travel grant |
| Amount | £500 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Society for Experimental Biology (SEB) |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | Global |
| Start | 07/2022 |
| End | 08/2022 |