Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Reviewed by: Graham R. Bautista, naimbautista bio. Bautista, orcid. Burggren, orcid. This article was submitted to Developmental Physiology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Physiology. The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author s and the copyright owner s are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice.
No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Despite the current knowledge of the devastating effects of external exposure to crude oil on animal mortality, the study of developmental, transgenerational effects of such exposure has received little attention.
We used the king quail as an animal model to determine if chronic dietary exposure to crude oil in a parental population would affect morpho-physiological phenotypic variables in their immediate offspring generation. To determine the parental influence on their offspring, we measured metabolic and respiratory physiology in exposed parents and in their non-exposed eggs and hatchlings. Body mass and numerous metabolic e. Notably, water loss though the eggshell was increased in eggs from High oil level exposed parents.
Respiratory variables of hatchlings did not vary between populations, but hatchlings obtained from High oil-exposed parents exhibited lower capacities to maintain body temperature while exposed to a cooling protocol in comparison to hatchlings from Low- and Control-derived parents. The present study demonstrates that parental exposure to crude oil via diet impacts some aspects of physiological performance of the subsequent first F 1 generation.
Keywords: Transgenerational Inheritance, parental effects, crude oil, oxygen consumption, development, epigenetics, physiology, bird. The impacts of crude oil exposure on wild animal populations have been a subject of study since the s when major oil spills first appeared.
