NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2019: Resurrecting natural history collections to assess evolutionary responses to climate change

本行动资助NSF 2019年度生物学博士后研究奖学金，利用生物馆藏进行研究。该奖学金支持研究和培训将以创新的方式利用生物收集的研究员。了解生物体如何应对环境变化是生物学的一个基本目标，在干旱的美国西南部，这一目标日益紧迫，在过去几十年里，严重的干旱以前所未有的方式挑战着生物体。生物体适应气候变化的方式一般有两种：非遗传变化和遗传变化。基因变化会代代相传，使后代在未来更成功。这项研究将使用保存下来的种子集合，以及这些祖先的自然后代，来创造一个“进化时间机器”。通过复活休眠植物祖先的种子，并在普通条件下与它们的后代一起生长，这项研究将揭示作用中的进化。确定适应能否跟上快速变化的气候，对于预测生物多样性的未来以及单个种群和物种的命运具有重大意义。这项工作将促进对适应的基本理解，并将为管理决策提供信息，促进生态系统健康和保护生物多样性。在研究适应时，我们通常局限于过去过程的终点，然而复活实验使我们能够利用保存的繁殖体来量化随时间推移的进化变化。这位研究员将从植物标本馆收集的一种广泛分布的一年生植物巴塔哥尼加车前草（Plantago patagonica）的休眠种子中复活，并将它们与从一系列普通花园的同一地点收集的当代基因型进行比较。通过在亚利桑那州北部的环境梯度中复制复活，这项工作将模拟未来的干燥和变暖，并将评估当地适应模式如何限制适应潜力。这一框架有助于理解基因在环境相互作用中的作用，并为预测未来对气候变化的反应提供了一个框架。这项工作通过在自然野外环境中生长祖先和后代，跨越非生物条件的梯度，并通过将表型反应的实验数据与记录选择的人口统计学含义的遗传数据相结合，扩展了过去的复活实现。除了对基础科学的贡献外，这项工作还将通过与非营利STEM中心的合作，促进当地社区对进化生物学的更好理解。该研究员还将领导本科生和社区成员为西南实验花园阵列相关的种子库收集种子；这一努力将培养对当地植物生物多样性的欣赏，并将从亚利桑那州北部一个显著的环境梯度中积累种子资源，用于未来的当地适应和复活实验。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。

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2019, Research Using Biological Collections. The fellowship supports research and training of the fellow that will utilize biological collections in innovative ways. Understanding how organisms cope with environmental change is a fundamental goal in biology, and one that is increasingly pressing in the arid Southwestern U.S., where severe drought over the past several decades has challenged organisms in unprecedented ways. There are generally two ways that organisms can acclimate to a changing climate: Non-genetic changes and genetic changes. Genetic changes are passed down across generations, allowing offspring to be more successful in the future. This research will use preserved seed collections, together with natural populations that have descended from these same ancestors, to create an 'evolutionary time machine'. By resurrecting seeds of dormant plant ancestors, and growing them together with their offspring under common conditions, this research will expose evolution in action. Determining whether adaptation can keep pace with a rapidly changing climate has major implications for predicting the future of biodiversity, and the fate of individual populations and species. This work will advance a basic understanding of adaptation, and will also inform management decisions, promoting ecosystem health and preserving biodiversity.In investigating adaptation we are often limited to the endpoints of past processes, however resurrection experiments allow us to leverage preserved propagules to quantify evolutionary change across time. The fellow will resurrect dormant seeds of Plantago patagonica, a widespread annual plant, from herbarium collections, and will compare them to contemporary genotypes collected from the same locations in a series of common gardens. By replicating resurrections across an environmental gradient in northern Arizona, this work will simulate future drying and warming, and will assess how patterns of local adaptation might constrain adaptive potential. This framework facilitates an understanding of the role of gene by environment interactions, and provides a framework for predicting future responses to climate change. This work expands past resurrection implementations by growing ancestors and descendants in natural field environments, across a gradient of abiotic conditions, and by combining experimental data on phenotypic responses with genetic data documenting the demographic implications of selection. In addition to its contributions to basic science, this work will promote a better understanding of evolutionary biology in the local community through collaborations with a non-profit STEM center. The fellow will also lead undergraduates and members of the community in collecting seeds for a seed bank repository associated with the Southwest Experimental Garden Array; this effort will foster an appreciation for local plant biodiversity, and will amass seed resources from across a remarkable environmental gradient in northern Arizona to be used for future local adaptation and resurrection experiments.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.