# Genetic and neural mechanisms of paternal care behavior

> **NIH NIH R35** · TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY · 2024 · $372,316

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract: The degree to which behavioral variation is shaped by experiences or determined
by heritability has long captivated biologists and non-biologists alike. It is now clear that behavior often has
a genetic component, but mapping specific genetic variants underlying differences in behavior remains a major
challenge. Recent advances in “-omics” technologies and analytical tools provide an exciting opportunity to
uncover connections between genetic and behavioral variation. Parental care is a complex behavioral trait that
has independently evolved many times across the animal kingdom. The neural, physiological, and molecular
mechanisms of maternal (female-provided) care have been widely studied and appear to be highly conserved
across deep evolutionary time. Yet, there remains a critical gap in our understanding of the mechanisms of
paternal (male-provided) care. The small stream fishes commonly called darters provide a unique opportunity to
investigate the genetic and evolutionary drivers of paternal care. Darters comprise the most diverse group of
vertebrates in North America and exhibit ample variation in reproductive behavior. Paternal care has evolved
repeatedly among evolutionarily independent darter lineages and has also been secondarily lost in at least one
species. Our goal over this five-year project is to use the darter system we developed to study the biological
basis of evolved differences in paternal care. We will leverage natural replication in this system to test the
hypothesis that similar genetic and molecular changes underlie the evolution of this behavior in darters. Our lab
has pioneered the development of genomic resources and functional genetic tools for darters, which will serve
as a platform for the proposed work. First, we will take advantage of the fact that closely related darter species
with and without paternal care can form viable crosses to produce fine-scale genetic maps for paternal care
behavior. Second, will use our previously developed bioinformatic pipelines to conduct genome scans for
selection and identify genes repeatedly under positive selection only in species that have evolved paternal care.
Additionally, we will ask whether these same genes show signatures of relaxed selection in a species that
secondarily lost paternal care. Third, we will investigate the neural and transcriptional basis of paternal care
using an approach for molecular profiling of behaviorally relevant neurons that we recently developed in darters.
The proposed work will be complimentary to other lines of research in the lab aimed at applying population
genomic, quantitative genetic, and functional genetic methods in darters and other fish models to test
fundamental evolutionary hypotheses and uncover genotype-phenotype connections. This innovative project will
bridge behavioral neuroscience and evolutionary genomics – fields which have historically remained largely
siloed and limited to model systems – to investi...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10931859
- **Project number:** 1R35GM154624-01
- **Recipient organization:** TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Rachel L Moran
- **Activity code:** R35 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $372,316
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2024-07-09 → 2029-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10931859

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10931859, Genetic and neural mechanisms of paternal care behavior (1R35GM154624-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10931859. Licensed CC0.

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