Data from: Paternal care in a fish: epigenetics and fitness enhancing effects on offspring anxiety

In many animals, including humans, interactions with caring parents can have long-lasting effects on offspring sensitivity to stressors. However, whether these parental effects impact offspring fitness in nature is often unclear. In addition, despite evidence that maternal care can influence offspring behaviour via epigenetic alterations to the genome, it remains unclear whether paternal care has similar effects. Here, we show in three-spined sticklebacks, a fish in which fathers are the sole provider of offspring care, that the direct care provided by fathers affects offspring anxiety and the potential for epigenetic alterations to the offspring genome. We find that families are differentially vulnerable to early stress and fathers can compensate for this differential sensitivity with the quality of their care. This variation in paternal care is also linked to the expression in offspring brains of a DNA methyltransferase (Dnmt3a) responsible for de novo methylation. We show that these paternal effects are potentially adaptive and anxious offspring are unlikely to survive an encounter with a predator. By supplying offspring care, fathers reduce offspring anxiety thereby increasing the survival of their offspring—not in the traditional sense through resource provisioning but through an epigenetic effect on offspring behavioural development.包括人类在内的诸多动物，其与抚育子代双亲的互动，可对子代的应激源敏感性产生持久影响。然而，这类亲代效应是否能在自然环境中影响子代的进化适合度，目前仍缺乏明确结论。此外，尽管已有研究证实母育抚育可通过基因组的表观遗传修饰（epigenetic alterations）影响子代行为，但父育抚育是否能产生类似效应，目前仍不明朗。本研究以父方为唯一子代抚育者的三棘刺鱼（three-spined sticklebacks）为研究对象，结果显示父方提供的直接抚育会影响子代的焦虑样行为，以及子代基因组发生表观遗传修饰的潜能。研究发现，不同家系对早期应激的易感性存在显著差异，而父方可以通过优化抚育质量来弥补这种差异化的敏感性。父方抚育的这种差异，还与子代脑组织中负责从头甲基化的DNA甲基转移酶（Dnmt3a）的表达水平显著相关。本研究证实，这类父代效应具备潜在适应性；遭遇捕食者时，表现出焦虑样行为的子代存活率极低。父方通过提供子代抚育服务，可降低子代的焦虑水平，进而提升子代存活率——这一过程并非通过传统的资源供给途径实现，而是通过对子代行为发育产生表观遗传调控效应完成的。