CAREER: The role of seasonal migration in avian diversification

这个项目的目标是探索季节性候鸟越冬地的自然选择在维持或反对适应性分化方面的作用。该项目利用了可用于研究最广泛的动物群体之一的丰富信息。此外，这项工作将通过预测季节性候鸟适应快速环境变化的能力，提供所有栖息地的重要信息，用于保护新热带候鸟，其中超过一半的候鸟正在减少。该项目包括一个由三部分组成的计划，旨在改善对地方、国家和国际各级代表不足的少数群体的STEM教育：1)鸟营--一个针对科罗拉多州柯林斯堡低收入学校的为期数天的教育推广计划；2)无国界鸟类--一系列西班牙语视频(附英文字幕)，着重介绍拉丁美洲和女科学家与自然纪录片制作人共同开发的工作；以及3)墨西哥生物信息学讲习班--与美国和墨西哥的科学家合作举办的国际基因组测序和生物信息学讲习班。长期以来，理论模型一直支持这样的观点，即跨越年度周期的强大迁徙联系将促进当地适应越冬地区，但支持这一假说的实证研究尚未得到探索。这种知识差距是由于技术障碍造成的，这些障碍与无法跟踪迁徙运动和评估基因组中适应性差异的模式有关。这项拟议工作的目标是利用跟踪技术和基因组测序方面的最新进展来测试关于以前在越冬场地上未探索的事件在适应进化过程中所起作用的理论预测。这项拟议的工作将利用和合成11种候鸟的种群基因组和迁徙运动数据，以提供对跨年度周期的强大迁徙联系促进当地适应越冬地区这一假设的首次实证检验。对跨越时间和空间的基因流动的遗传估计将与栖息地建模相结合，以回答有关生态和物候学在季节性候鸟适应分化过程中所起作用的基本问题。生态、分子和统计学方法在一系列物种中的整合将使基本的进化问题得以解决。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The goal of this project is to explore the role of natural selection on the wintering grounds of seasonal migratory birds in maintaining or opposing adaptive divergence. The project takes advantage of the wealth of information available for one of the most widely studied groups of animals. Additionally, the work will provide important information across all habitats for use in conservation of Neotropical migratory birds, over half of which are declining, by predicting the capacity of seasonal migratory animals to adapt to rapid environmental change. The project includes a 3-part plan to improve STEM education for underrepresented minority groups at the local, national, and international level: 1) Bird Camp – a multi-day educational outreach program targeting low-income schools in Fort Collins, Colorado; 2) Birds without Borders – a series of Spanish language (with English subtitles) videos that highlight the work of Latin American and female scientists developed with nature documentary film makers; and 3) Mexico Bioinformatics Workshop – an international genomic sequencing and bioinformatics workshop in collaboration with US and Mexican scientists. Theoretical models have long supported the idea that strong migratory connections across the annual cycle will promote local adaptation to wintering areas, but empirical research to support this hypothesis is unexplored. This knowledge gap resulted from technological hurdles related to the inability to track migratory movements and assess patterns of adaptive divergence across the genome. The goal of the proposed work is to take advantage of recent advances in tracking technology and genomic sequencing to test theoretical predictions regarding the role of previously unexplored events on the wintering grounds in the process of adaptive evolution. The proposed work will leverage and synthesize population genomic and migratory movement data for 11 species of migratory birds to provide the first empirical test of the hypothesis that strong migratory connections across the annual cycle promote local adaptation to wintering areas. Genetic estimates of gene flow across time and space will be combined with habitat modeling to answer basic questions about the role of ecology and phenology in the process of adaptive divergence in seasonal migratory birds. The integration of ecological, molecular, and statistical approaches across a range of species will allow fundamental evolutionary questions to be addressed.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.