CAREER: The role of seasonal migration in avian diversification

本项目的目标是探索自然选择在季节性候鸟越冬地维持或对抗适应性分歧中的作用。该项目利用了最广泛研究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迁徙动物适应快速环境变化的能力，为保护新热带候鸟提供所有栖息地的重要信息，其中一半以上正在减少。该项目包括一个由三部分组成的计划，旨在改善地方、国家和国际层面上代表性不足的少数群体的STEM教育：1）鸟营--一个针对科罗拉多柯林斯堡低收入学校的多日教育外展计划; 2）无国界的鸟-西班牙语系列（有英文字幕）与自然纪录片制作人合作制作的突出介绍拉丁美洲和女科学家工作的录像;墨西哥生物信息学研讨会-与美国和墨西哥科学家合作举办的国际基因组测序和生物信息学研讨会。 长期以来，理论模型一直支持这样一种观点，即在整个年度周期中，强有力的迁徙联系将促进当地对越冬地区的适应，但支持这一假设的实证研究尚未得到探讨。这种知识差距是由于无法跟踪迁徙运动和评估整个基因组的适应性差异模式而造成的技术障碍。拟议工作的目标是利用跟踪技术和基因组测序的最新进展，以测试关于适应性进化过程中越冬地上先前未探索的事件的作用的理论预测。拟议的工作将利用和综合11种候鸟的种群基因组和迁徙运动数据，以提供对这一假设的第一次实证检验，即在整个年度周期中，强有力的迁徙联系促进了当地对越冬地区的适应。跨时间和空间的基因流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在季节性候鸟适应性分化过程中的作用的基本问题。生态学、分子学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到解决。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得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来支持。

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.