Many of our important biological functions respond to daily and seasonal changes in light and temperature. The same is also true of the animal world. We are interested to understand how the physiology of animals can effectively respond to their environment using biochemical signalling. While melatonin signalling is a strong predictor of response to changing season, it is well understood that the body uses other methods that remain to be elucidated and this is where we are focusing our efforts.
Two groups of animals that respond in quite disparate ways to changes in season are domestic dogs and wild canids. Wild canids have a distinctive breeding season that occurs during the colder months. Historically, this allows the pups to be denned in colder months when pups have trouble thermoregulating, and then the pups emerge in the springtime when food is more available. Using genome-wide mapping we identified a strong signal in the vicinity of a gene that is part of a pathway with capacity to enable effective sensing of seasonal changes. This presentation will show how we have demonstrated a strong connection between this pathway with seasonal breeding in multiple vertebrate and invertebrate species.