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oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/50552 2023-07-11 col_2142_5131 col_2142_14826 com_2142_5130 com_2142_8913 com_2142_8903

Cheviron, Zachary A. Stager, Maria 2014-09-16T17:23:47Z 2014-09-16T17:23:47Z 2014-08 2014-09-16 2014-08 Physiological adaptive acclimatization allows an organism to balance the competing demands of its life cycle and environment. This thesis seeks to further our understanding of the processes underlying physiological acclimation by characterizing two molecular mechanisms that enable organisms to mount physiological responses to changing environmental conditions. Comprised of two investigations, it focuses on the molecular mechanisms underlying variation in avian aerobic performance. In the first, I explore regulatory changes that act on relatively short time periods, enabling organisms to respond to rapid environmental changes within an individual’s lifetime. I show that thermogenic flexibility manifested from simultaneous changes in the expression of genes within hierarchical regulatory networks in response to temperature in the Dark-eyed Junco (Junco hyemalis). This transcriptomic variation resulted in rapid physiological modifications within individuals. In the second, I instead characterize coding mutations that occur on the timescale of generations. I show that differences in the mitochondrial sequences of the genes encoding the machinery of cellular metabolism could result in canalized differences in whole-organism aerobic performance among Tachycineta swallow species. Sites of positive selection were concentrated in species with ‘slow’ life histories that may be associated with low metabolic rates. Together these investigations provide a concise survey of the molecular tools birds are equipped with to metabolically respond and adapt to environmental variation. Item withdrawn by Mark Zulauf (zulauf@illinois.edu) on 2014-07-14T19:01:21Z Item was in collections: University of Illinois Theses & Dissertations (ID: 1) No. of bitstreams: 4 Stager_Maria_Thesis_Final.docx: 3782920 bytes, checksum: c6669c5b0da47339071402878131f113 (MD5) Appendix_E.xls: 51241 bytes, checksum: 034f169f2d6a576c768bd7d6cdc60f22 (MD5) Appendix_B.xls: 79953 bytes, checksum: 937950bfe3de0fb7b8ead060afb90a41 (MD5) Stager_Maria.pdf: 3405247 bytes, checksum: 38ee70e32798d87678534eefe281f4d7 (MD5) Made available in DSpace on 2014-09-16T17:23:47Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 5 Maria_Stager.pdf: 3411786 bytes, checksum: 635a3f045f88cb80f42f7f25ff5668a1 (MD5) Appendix_E.xls: 51241 bytes, checksum: 034f169f2d6a576c768bd7d6cdc60f22 (MD5) Appendix_B.xls: 79953 bytes, checksum: 937950bfe3de0fb7b8ead060afb90a41 (MD5) Stager_Maria_Thesis_Final.docx: 3776949 bytes, checksum: db13f37c9bb87377f9b2e5c61e8ce56d (MD5) license.txt: 4061 bytes, checksum: 6081085ba9f530abbf5e58311b93a3a4 (MD5) http://hdl.handle.net/2142/50552 en Copyright 2014 Maria Stager. Portions of this thesis copyright 2014 Elsevier B.V. metabolic gene expression coding mutation Dark-eyed Junco Tachycineta pace of life Molecular mechanisms underlying avian metabolic variation: a genomic approach text School of Integrative Biology 1383 Biology 0314 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Thesis M.S. MS:Biol-Ecol Ethol& Evol -UIUC 10KS0315MS