BEE: Mechanisms and Scope for Adaptive Rescue in Polymorphic Populations

社会的一个巨大挑战是如何在全球环境迅速变化的持续时期保持生物多样性。虽然植物和动物可以通过迁移到不同的地区来应对环境变化，但它们也可以通过可塑性（例如通过改变行为以适应条件）或通过自然选择进行快速进化来适应。通过可塑性或进化快速适应的选择仍然相对未被研究。这一领域的研究至关重要，因为野生物种在快速变化的环境中的命运将在很大程度上取决于这种适应性拯救的范围。 对于全球21种鸟类和哺乳动物物种来说，生存取决于季节性颜色蜕皮产生的伪装，从棕色到白色，以跟踪冬季的雪。由于冬季降雪持续时间的减少是持续气候变化最普遍的结果之一，这些动物越来越多地发现他们的冬季白色伪装与越来越多的棕色无雪背景相矛盾。这项研究将使用实地研究，圈养实验和雪鞋野兔的遗传分析作为模型，以提供一般的科学见解，以促进适应性救援-因此生物多样性的持久性-在不断变化的世界。本研究将评估适应性救援气候变化的范围在一个视觉上引人注目的模型系统的基础上多态雪鞋野兔种群同域冬季棕色和冬季白色个人。实地研究（包括放射性标记野生动物）将直接测量同域冬季颜色变体的适应性成本和行为可塑性。多形态野兔的圈养实验将量化野兔识别自身毛色不匹配的范围，并采取行动减少不匹配或捕食风险。总的来说，田间和圈养实验将形成一个机制图的基础，该机制图将多态种群中的基因型和性状表型与平均适合度和种群增长联系起来，同时明确说明行为可塑性和适应性表型的扩散。在自然历史收藏中存档的地理参考雪鞋野兔标本将有助于对替代伪装表型的时间进化反应进行基因测试。总的来说，这项研究计划联系生态和进化驱动力的季节性伪装在雪鞋野兔，并提供了一个框架，以预测如何适应变化，在这个健身关键性状将响应未来的环境变化。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得支持的评估使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。

One of society's great challenges centers on how to maintain biodiversity during the ongoing period of rapid global environmental change. Although plants and animals can respond to environmental change by moving to a different area, they could also adapt in place through either plasticity (e.g. by changing behaviors to match the conditions) or by rapid evolutionary change via natural selection. The option of rapid adaptation in place via plasticity or evolution remains relatively unstudied. Research in this area is critical because the fate of wild species in a rapidly changing environment will depend in large part on the scope of this adaptive rescue. For 21 bird and mammal species globally, survival depends on camouflage arising from seasonal color molts from brown to white to track the winter presence of snow. Because a decreasing winter snow duration is one of the most pervasive outcomes of ongoing climate change, these animals increasingly find their winter white camouflage compromised against increasingly brown snowless backgrounds. This research will use field studies, captive experiments, and genetic analyses with snowshoe hares as a model to provide general scientific insights to foster adaptive rescue - and therefore biodiversity persistence - in a changing world. This study will evaluate the scope for adaptive rescue to climate change in a visually compelling model system based on polymorphic snowshoe hare populations with sympatric winter brown and winter white individuals. Field studies (including radiotagging wild animals) will directly measure fitness costs and behavioral plasticity for the sympatric winter color morphs. Captive experiments with the polymorphic hares will quantify the scope for hares to recognize their own coat color mismatch and behave to reduce either mismatch or risk of predation. Collectively, the field and captive experiments will form the basis of a mechanistic map linking genotype and trait phenotype in a polymorphic population to mean fitness and population growth, while explicitly accounting for behavioral plasticity and the dispersal of adaptive phenotypes.In addition to these contemporary measures of natural selection and behavioral plasticity, georeferenced snowshoe hare specimens archived in natural history collections will facilitate genetic tests for temporal evolutionary responses in the alternative camouflage phenotypes. Overall, this research program links ecological and evolutionary drivers of seasonal camouflage in snowshoe hares and provides a framework to predict how adaptive variation at this fitness-critical trait will respond to future environmental changes.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.