NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2015

2015 财年 NSF 生物学博士后奖学金

• 批准号: 1523667
• 负责人: Ryan Folk
• 金额: $ 13.8万
• 依托单位: Folk Ryan A
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Fellowship Award
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-09-01 至 2017-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1523667&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: NSF; Postdoctoral; Fellowship; Biology; FY

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2015, Research Using Biological Collections. The fellowship supports a research and training plan for the Fellow to take transformative approaches to grand challenges in biology that employ biological collections in highly innovative ways. The title of the research plan for this fellowship to Ryan Folk is "Niche biology in deep time: new methods for ancestral niche reconstruction applied to the Saxifragales." The host institution for this fellowship is the University of Florida, and the sponsoring scientists are Robert P. Guralnick, Douglas E. Soltis, and Pamela S. Soltis. An ecological niche is the role of a species in an ecological community, encompassing all of its interactions with other species and its physical environment. Ecological niche modeling (ENM) uses computer algorithms to model the ecological requirements of species and has emerged as an indispensible tool to predict their geographic distributions -- past, present, and future. ENM is perfectly suited to use the increasingly large and accessible amount of biological museum specimen data being generated across the world. These data and new modeling methods promise to provide answers to critical questions at the interface of ecology and evolutionary biology, such as the degree to which organisms can shift in ecological niche over time, with implications for their potential responses to present-day environmental change. The fellowship research is developing broadly applicable computational packages that utilize biological collections data and then using these tools to further integrate ENM with evolutionary history. Further, these computational tools are likely to see broader use by others to enable integrative research from the level of DNA to the structure of organisms. As a test case, the research focuses on the plant lineage Saxifragales, chosen for its particularly remarkable variation in ecological requirements, from northern tundra to desert, aquatic, and alpine habitats. This lineage is significant for containing familiar agricultural and garden plants such as currants, gooseberries, sweetgum, witch hazel, peonies, and coral bells as well as invasive weeds such as watermilfoil. Training goals for the Fellow include learning methods in biological informatics and ecological modeling and developing expertise in the natural history of saxifrages. The informatics training includes the use of scripting languages to parse and handle the large datasets now increasingly characteristic of biological collections research, thus preparing the Fellow for a research career using biological collections. Educational outreach includes both undergraduate biology courses and high school teaching.

这项行动资助了2015财年NSF生物学博士后研究奖学金，使用生物收集的研究。该研究金支持研究员的研究和培训计划，以采取变革性方法应对生物学的重大挑战，以高度创新的方式利用生物学收藏。 这项研究计划的标题是“生态位生物学在深时间：新方法的祖先生态位重建应用于虎耳草。“该奖学金的主办机构是佛罗里达大学，赞助科学家是罗伯特P.古拉尔尼克、道格拉斯E. Soltis和Pamela S.索提斯 生态位是一个物种在生态群落中的作用，包括它与其他物种及其物理环境的所有相互作用。生态位建模（ENM）使用计算机算法来模拟物种的生态需求，并已成为预测其地理分布的不可或缺的工具-过去，现在和未来。ENM非常适合使用世界各地产生的越来越大且可访问的生物博物馆标本数据。这些数据和新的建模方法有望为生态学和进化生物学界面上的关键问题提供答案，例如生物体随着时间的推移在生态位中的转移程度，以及它们对当今环境变化的潜在反应。研究金研究正在开发广泛适用的计算包，利用生物收集数据，然后使用这些工具，以进一步整合ENM与进化历史。此外，这些计算工具可能会被其他人更广泛地使用，以实现从DNA水平到生物体结构的综合研究。作为一个测试案例，研究的重点是植物谱系虎耳草，选择其特别显着的变化在生态要求，从北方苔原沙漠，水生和高山栖息地。这一谱系对于包含熟悉的农业和园林植物如醋栗、醋栗、枫香、金缕梅、牡丹和珊瑚钟以及入侵杂草如水芹是重要的。研究员的培训目标包括学习生物信息学和生态建模方法，并发展虎耳草自然史方面的专门知识。 信息学培训包括使用脚本语言来解析和处理大型数据集，现在越来越多的生物收集研究的特点，从而准备研究员使用生物收集的研究生涯。 教育推广包括本科生物课程和高中教学。