International Research Fellowship Program: Connecting Genes to Ecosystems

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0301633FridleyThe International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad.This award will support a fourteen month research fellowship (within a duration of 36 months) by Dr. Jason D. Fridley to work with Dr. J. P. Grimes at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom.This project involves a suite of experiments focused on identifying the key processes by which genetic diversity maintains local species diversity. The research will address several questions: For which traits is genetic variation most important for population persistence? How is this genetic variation maintained locally; are there necessary tradeoffs between selection pressures for protecting tissues (from grazing or pathogen attack) versus those favoring rapid tissue proliferation? The results could indicate that because of such adaptive tradeoffs, population persistence in heterogeneous environments requires sufficient levels of genetic variation. The work will thus help identify the processes through which genetic variation controls community and ecosystem properties potentially affecting a wide variety of terrestrial plant communities.