RII Track-4: Evolutionary Genomics of Multispecies Ecological Interactions

生态群落是由相互作用的不同物种种群组成的。群落生态学领域的一个中心目标是了解这些不同物种相互作用的结果。考虑到生物特征控制着物种之间的相互作用，了解物种特征在群落背景下是如何进化的，对于更清晰地了解生态群落的动态是至关重要的。本研究的目的是了解这些特征在多物种群落中的进化，并确定进化是否以及如何在成对与更多样化的物种组合中有所不同。实验进化是在实验室中研究进化的有力工具。通过将具有快速繁殖时间的生物置于选择压力下，研究人员可以实时观察到表型和基因型水平上的进化变化。在这个项目中，PI将通过实验进化蛔虫和两种细菌之间的捕食者-猎物相互作用，以量化它们相互作用的变化。与纽约大学的合作者一起，PI将获得关于产生和分析掠夺性蛔虫进化种群的基因组DNA序列数据的方法方面的培训，从而允许遗传和社区水平变化之间的联系。这些发现将进一步加深我们对生态群落中遗传进化如何进行的理解，并有助于我们理解跨组织尺度构建生物多样性的力量。物种间的相互作用是生态群落中普遍存在的特征。因此，了解这些相互作用的结果为维持生物多样性提供了重要信息。由于相互作用的结果通常由生物性状介导，因此了解这些性状以及相互作用如何随时间演变将是理解生物多样性随时间动态的关键。将潜在的遗传变异与这些群落水平的表型（即物种相互作用）联系起来是本建议的目标。该项目将使用一个实验生态模块，与模式生物秀丽隐杆线虫（线虫）、黄粘球菌（细菌）和大肠杆菌（细菌）一起研究进化的群落。有了这些遗传上可处理的物种，该项目将同时测量表型（生态）和DNA中潜在的基因组变化。该奖学金的活动包括培训PI对实验系统中的顶级捕食者隐杆线虫进行遗传和基因组分析，以将模型群落的表型变化与潜在的遗传变化联系起来。与宿主机构（纽约大学）的合作者一起，将生成和分析在不同生态环境中进化的秀丽隐杆线虫种群的基因组序列数据，以确定基因组进化模式在这些环境中如何变化。本研究的结果将提供关于基因组选择目标在两两和多物种群落相互作用中是否以及如何有质的不同的见解。该研究将有助于理解进化遗传学、群落生态学和生物组织尺度（即基因组学和群落）之间的联系。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。

Ecological communities are comprised of different species populations that interact with one another. A central goal of the field of community ecology is to understand the outcomes of these various species interactions. Given that organismal traits govern the interactions between species, an understanding of how traits evolve in a community context is critical for a clearer picture of the dynamics of ecological communities. The aim of this research to understand the evolution of these traits in multispecies communities, and to determine if and how evolution differs in pairwise vs. more diverse species combinations. Experimental evolution is a powerful tool for the study of evolution in the laboratory. By subjecting organisms with rapid generation times to selection pressures, investigators can observe evolutionary changes at both the phenotypic and genotypic level in real time. In this project, the PI will experimentally evolve predator-prey interactions between roundworms and two species of bacteria to quantify changes in their interactions. With collaborators at New York University, the PI will gain training in methods to produce and analyze genomic DNA sequence data of evolving populations of the predatory roundworms, allowing for linkages between genetic and community-level changes. Findings will further our understanding of how genetic evolution proceeds in ecological communities and contribute to our understanding of the forces structuring biodiversity across scales of organization.Species interactions are a ubiquitous feature of ecological communities. As such, understanding the outcomes of these interactions provides important information for the maintenance of biodiversity. Since the outcomes of the interactions are often mediated by organismal traits, understanding how these traits, and thus interactions, evolve over time will be key to understanding biodiversity dynamics over time. Linking the underlying genetic variation to these community level phenotypes (i.e., species interactions) is the goal of this proposal. This project will use an experimental ecological module with the model organisms Caenorhabditis elegans (nematode), Myxococcus xanthus (bacteria), and Escherichia coli (bacteria) to study evolving communities. With these genetically tractable species, this project will simultaneously measure both phenotypic (ecological) and the underlying genomic changes in the DNA. Activities of this fellowship include the training of the PI in genetic and genomic analyses of Caenorhabditis nematodes, top predators in the experimental system, to link phenotypic changes in model communities to the underlying genetic changes. With collaborators at the host institution (New York University), genomic sequence data from populations of C. elegans nematodes evolved in different ecological settings will be generated and analyzed to determine how patterns of genomic evolution vary across these scenarios. Results from this research will provide insight into whether and how the genomic targets of selection are qualitatively different in pairwise vs. multispecies community interactions. The proposed research will contribute to understanding the linkages between evolutionary genetics, community ecology, and the scales of biological organization (i.e., genomics and communities).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.