EAR PF CLARIFYING MAMMALIAN RESPONSES TO ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE: IMPROVING NICHE MODELING THROUGH THE INTEGRATION OF CLIMATE AND DIETARY INFORMATION

Melissa I. Pardi博士获得了美国国家科学基金会EAR博士后奖学金，在范德比尔特大学开展研究和教育计划。本研究考察了在过去的35000年里，北美哺乳动物和群落对干旱环境变化的长期进化反应。该研究利用牙釉质化石的氧同位素数据进行气候重建，以模拟物种分布，并综合稳定同位素分析和牙齿微磨损纹理，以了解物种如何应对干旱的变化。Pardi博士正在让高中生和本科生参与研究。Pardi博士还在为中学生设计教学模块，并与她的导师一起在田纳西州盲人学校开展拓展项目，与一小群学生一起开展科学活动。综合起来，现代和古生态学的观点告诉我们，随着时间的推移，生物群对干旱的预期反应。Pardi博士的项目结合了三种不同的工具来理解现代和古代生态系统的各个方面，这些工具的合并是理解物种动态的一种新方法。模型已被用于预测未来干旱情景下物种的分布，但它们无法利用化石记录预测过去的分布，这引起了人们对预测可靠性的担忧。该项目正在改进模型的数据，并调查化石记录中的饮食变化是否可以解释物种分布模型中观测到的和预测的不匹配。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Dr. Melissa I. Pardi has been granted an NSF EAR Postdoctoral Fellowship to carry out research and education plans at Vanderbilt University. This study examines long-term evolutionary responses of mammals and communities to environmental changes in aridity during the last 35,000 years in North America. The study uses oxygen isotope data from fossil tooth enamel to produce climate reconstructions to model species distribution and integrated stable isotope analysis and dental microwear texture to gain an understanding of how species respond to variability in aridity. Dr. Pardi is engaging high school and undergraduate students in research. Dr. Pardi is also designing teaching modules for middle school students and working with her mentor on outreach programs to the Tennessee School for the Blind working with small groups of students on science activities. Taken together, modern and paleoecological perspectives inform on the expected responses of biota to aridity over time. Dr. Pardi's project unites three separate tools to understand various aspects of both modern and ancient ecological systems and the merging of these tools is a novel approach to understand species dynamics. Models have been used to project distributions of species under future scenarios of aridity, but their inability to predict past distributions using the fossil record causes concern about reliability for predictions. This project is improving the data for the models and investigating whether dietary shifts in the fossil record can explain the mismatch between observed and predicted occurrences in species distribution models.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.