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，其与抚育双亲的互动，会对子代对应激源的敏感性产生持久影响。然而，这类亲本效应是否会在自然环境中影响子代的适合度，目前仍不明确。此外，尽管已有研究表明母本抚育可通过基因组的表观遗传修饰影响子代行为，但父本抚育是否能产生类似效应，目前仍未可知。本研究以父本为子代唯一抚育者的三刺棘鱼为研究对象，结果表明：父本提供的直接抚育，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。我们发现，不同家系对子代早期应激的易感性存在差异，而父本可通过提升抚育质量来弥补这种差异化敏感性。父本抚育的这种差异，还与子代大脑中负责从头甲基化的DNA甲基转移酶（DNA methyltransferase, Dnmt3a）的表达水平相关。本研究还证实，这类父本效应可能具有适应性：焦虑样子代在遭遇捕食者时存活概率极低。父本通过提供子代抚育，可降低子代的焦虑样反应，进而提升子代的存活率——这并非通过传统意义上的资源供给实现，而是通过对子代行为发育产生表观遗传调控效应达成的。