BEE: Evolutionary rescue in response to infectious disease: when will populations be rescued from pathogens?

许多物种和种群受到迅速变化的环境条件的威胁，包括新传染病的传入。随着传染病的爆发变得越来越普遍和严重，了解人口在面对致命病原体时如何生存变得越来越重要。当一个种群进化到能够在环境变化中生存下来，否则就会导致灭绝时，进化拯救可能会为一些种群在不断变化的世界中生存提供一种方法。大多数关于进化拯救的研究都集中在环境变化的非生物驱动因素上（例如，污染，极端温度），对进化拯救在应对疾病中的作用知之甚少。在这个项目中，研究人员将研究一种水蚤（水蚤），其种群由于非生物环境变化和病原体感染而面临的挑战是众所周知的。通过确定允许水蚤种群在应对疾病时经历进化拯救的条件，研究人员将获得有助于管理和控制许多其他系统中传染病的知识。该项目还将培训研究生和本科生，重点是来自代表性不足群体的学生。此外，研究人员将为本科生物学课程开发互动课堂活动，并组织一个研讨会，培训早期职业科学家建模传染病的方法。研究人员将结合联合收割机实验操作、基因分型、转录组学和建模来研究病原体引入后的进化拯救。他们将解决以下补充问题：（1）如何进化救援响应病原体不同的进化救援响应非生物应激？(2)非生物胁迫能促进疾病的进化拯救吗？以及（3）群落多样性对种群对病原体的进化反应有什么影响？拟议的工作将通过利用高度易处理的水蚤病原体系统来解决这些问题，以在多个尺度（实验室到室外围隔）上对种群进行实验操作，同时跟踪人口和遗传变化。实验操作将与建模工作配对，以确定机制并将结果推广到其他宿主-病原体系统。该奖项反映了NSF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。

Many species and populations are threatened by rapidly changing environmental conditions, including the introduction of novel infectious diseases. As outbreaks of infectious diseases get more common and severe, understanding how populations can survive when faced with deadly pathogens is increasingly important. Evolutionary rescue, which happens when a population evolves to survive environmental change that would otherwise cause extinction, may provide a way for some populations to persist in a changing world. Most studies of evolutionary rescue have focused on non-living drivers of environmental change (e.g., pollution, extreme temperatures), with little known regarding the role that evolutionary rescue plays in response to disease. In this project researchers will study a species of water flea (Daphnia) whose populations' challenges due to both non-living environmental change and pathogen infection are well known. By identifying the conditions that allow a population of water fleas to experience evolutionary rescue in response to disease the researchers will gain knowledge that will help in management and control of infectious diseases in many other systems. This project will also train graduate and undergraduate students with a focus on those from underrepresented groups. Additionally, the investigators will develop interactive classroom activities for undergraduate biology courses and organize a workshop to train early-career scientists in methods of modeling infectious disease. The investigators will combine experimental manipulations, genotyping, transcriptomics, and modeling to study evolutionary rescue in response to the introduction of a pathogen. They will address the following complementary questions: (1) How does evolutionary rescue in response to a pathogen differ from evolutionary rescue in response to an abiotic stressor? (2) Can abiotic stress facilitate evolutionary rescue from disease? and (3) What are the effects of community diversity on a population's evolutionary response to a pathogen? The proposed work will address these questions by utilizing a highly tractable Daphnia-pathogen system to perform experimental manipulations of populations at multiple scales (laboratory to outdoor mesocosm) while tracking demographic and genetic changes through time. Experimental manipulations will be paired with modeling efforts to identify mechanisms and generalize the results to additional host-pathogen systems. This approach will provide novel insight into how populations can respond and recover from outbreaks of infectious disease.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.