NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2020: The effect of land use change on Caribbean hawkmoth pollination behavior

这项行动资助了2020财年NSF生物学博士后研究奖学金，使用生物收集的研究。该研究金支持研究员的研究和培训，以创新的方式使用生物收藏品。在这个项目中，研究员将使用从生物标本中采集的昆虫花粉来评估这些昆虫的授粉行为如何因栖息地丧失而发生变化。传粉对自然生态系统和农业生态系统都至关重要，但土地利用的变化会导致传粉者物种的丧失和传粉者行为的变化，从而影响它们为植物提供的授粉质量。记录传粉者行为的变化对于准确预测未来的变化是必要的，但由于难以推断过去的物种相互作用而受到限制。这项研究将有助于解决这一困难，因为它是第一次使用历史上收集的飞蛾携带的花粉，也是为数不多的使用历史收集来重建植物-传粉者相互作用的研究之一。为了扩大工作的影响，该研究员将指导本科生进行研究，进行与研究有关的公共宣传和课堂演示，作为研究系统，该研究员将调查加勒比地区过去75年来植物传粉者网络的变化，在这段时间里，加勒比地区经历了重大但可变的栖息地丧失。该研究员将重点研究天蛾（鳞翅目：天蛾科）携带的花粉，天蛾是多产的传粉者，比其他传粉者群体积累的花粉量更少，并且在收集中有很好的代表性。作为现代的比较，这位研究员还将从牙买加的野生天蛾中收集花粉。这位研究员将通过局部再水化喙，然后通过DNA元条形码识别花粉负载，非破坏性地从固定的天蛾标本中去除花粉。这项技术将允许可靠的，标准化的鉴定，不依赖于花粉参考图书馆从历史植物群落。利用这种花粉，研究人员将测试竞争性的假设，即天蛾要么专门研究它们在形态上匹配的植物，要么机会主义地访问更广泛的花朵。面对栖息地的丧失，更高的专业化将降低植物传粉网络的整体弹性，但可能会保持稀有和受威胁的植物。在这个项目中，研究员将学习尖端的分子和网络分析技术。该项目活动还将使研究员在实地收集期间在其东道机构和牙买加当地科学家中参与外联和科学指导机会，该奖项反映了国家科学基金会的法定使命，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提供支持。

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2020, Research Using Biological Collections. The fellowship supports research and training of the fellow that will use biological collections in innovative ways. For this project, the fellow will use pollen taken from insects in biological collections to assess how the pollination behavior of these insects has changed in response to habitat loss. Pollination is critical to both natural and agricultural ecosystems, but land use changes can cause both the loss of pollinator species and changes in pollinator behavior that affect the quality of pollination they provide to plants. Documenting changes in pollinator behavior is necessary to accurately predict changes in the future but is limited by the difficulty of inferring species interactions in the past. This research will help resolve this difficulty by being the first use of pollen carried by historically collected moths, and one of very few studies to use historical collections to reconstruct plant-pollinator interactions. To broaden the impact of the work, the fellow will mentor undergraduate students in research, conduct public outreach and classroom demonstrations related to the research.As the study system, the fellow will investigate plant-pollinator network change over the past 75 years in the Caribbean, which has experienced significant but variable habitat loss over this time period. The fellow will focus on the pollens carried by hawkmoths (Lepidoptera: Sphingidae), which are prolific pollinators that accumulate less biased pollen loads than other pollinator groups and are well represented in collections. As a modern comparison, the fellow will also collect pollen loads from wild hawkmoths in Jamaica. The fellow will non-destructively remove the pollen from pinned hawkmoth specimens by locally rehydrating proboscises, then identifying the pollen loads via DNA meta-barcoding. This technique will allow for reliable, standardized identifications that do not rely on pollen reference libraries from historical plant communities. Using this pollen, the fellow will test the competing hypotheses that hawkmoths will either specialize on plants they match morphologically or opportunistically visit a wider range of flowers. In the face of habitat loss, higher specialization will reduce the overall resilience of plant-pollinator networks but will likely maintain rare and threatened plants. During this project, the fellow will learn cutting-edge molecular and network-analysis techniques. The project activities will also allow the fellow to engage in outreach and scientific mentoring opportunities both at their host institution and with local scientists in Jamaica during field collection.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.