NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2020

这一行动为NSF 2020财年生物学博士后研究奖学金提供了资金，综合研究调查了基因组、环境和表型之间相互作用的生命规则。该奖学金支持研究员的研究和培训，这些研究员将以创新的方式为生活规则领域做出贡献。这项研究调查了膜翅目的生态和进化，膜翅目的昆虫包括蚂蚁、蜜蜂、黄蜂和锯蝇等物种。这项工作有助于我们科学地理解遗传学、表观遗传学、行为和生态学在发育和生态时间尺度上是如何相关的，在一个经过充分研究和生物多样性的昆虫分支的背景下。这个项目解决了生物学中的基本问题，包括：蚂蚁和蜜蜂的群居生活是如何从它们与世隔绝的祖先那里产生的？群体特征是如何起源并变得复杂的？群体特征的荷尔蒙和神经生物学基础如何与物种间的遗传和生态差异联系在一起？这些来自社会群体进化的见解如何帮助人类设计具有弹性的分布式系统，例如应对灾难、管理社会传播的病原体以及提高网络物理系统的安全性？该研究员还将积极参与科学交流、指导和推广计划，特别强调当地服务不足的社区、基于团队的远程教育和跨学科方法，如复杂性科学。共生(群居)昆虫物种在种群内和物种之间显示出生态上重要的种群特征的差异，如行为(如集体觅食、搜索、进攻/防御)和繁殖策略。组织特异性基因表达模式可以通过改变群体水平的生理过程以一种非线性的方式影响群体特征，如集体行为。以往研究昆虫群体性状进化的方法具有有限的系统发育范围，没有考虑组织特异性基因表达在群体水平生理过程中的作用，或者只考虑了在所有物种中存在的单拷贝同源基因。该项目将结合多种生物技术(系统基因组学、转录组学、化学图谱、生态位模拟)来研究膜翅目特定谱系基因、复杂基因家族和组织特定表达模式在进化和功能上的作用。更广泛地说，本研究中开发的理论模型和生物信息学管道将远远超出膜翅目的范围，并为跨分类群的综合合成提供途径。该研究员将由加州大学戴维斯分校的Brian Johnson教授和宾夕法尼亚大学的Tim Linksvayer教授共同培训，并将致力于提高科学的参与度、包容性、重复性和透明度。该奖项反映了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。

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2020, Integrative Research Investigating the Rules of Life Governing Interactions Between Genomes, Environment and Phenotypes. The fellowship supports research and training of the Fellow that will contribute to the area of Rules of Life in innovative ways. This research investigates the ecology and evolution of the Hymenoptera, the order of insects containing species such as ants, bees, wasps, and sawflies. The work contributes to our scientific understanding of how genetics, epigenetics, behavior, and ecology are related over developmental and ecological time scales, in the context of a well-studied and biodiverse clade of insects. This project addresses fundamental questions in biology including: How did colony living (eusociality) arise in ants and bees from their solitary ancestors? How do colony traits originate and become elaborate? How are the hormonal and neurobiological underpinnings of colony traits linked to genetic and ecological variation among species? How might these insights from eusocial colony evolution help humans design resilient distributed systems, for example to respond to disasters, manage socially-spread pathogens, and improve the security of cyberphysical systems? The Fellow will also actively engage in science communication, mentoring, and outreach programs, with a special emphasis on local underserved communities, team-based remote education, and transdisciplinary approaches such as Complexity Science.Eusocial (colony-living) insect species display variation within populations and among species in ecologically-important colony traits such as behavior (e.g. collective foraging, search, offense/defense) and reproductive strategies. Tissue-specific gene expression patterns can influence colony traits such as collective behavior in a non-linear fashion through altering colony-level physiological processes. Previous approaches to studying the evolution of eusocial insect colony traits have been of limited phylogenetic scope, have not considered the role of tissue-specific gene expression in colony-level physiological processes, or only considered genes with single-copy orthologs present in all species considered. This project will integrate multiple biological techniques (phylogenomics, transcriptomics, chemical profiling, ecological niche modeling) to investigate the evolutionary and functional roles of lineage-specific genes, complex gene families, and tissue-specific expression patterns in Hymenoptera. More broadly, the theoretical models and bioinformatic pipelines developed in this research will generalize far beyond the Hymenoptera, and provide avenues for integrative synthesis across taxa. The Fellow will be co-trained by Prof. Brian Johnson (University of California, Davis) and Prof. Tim Linksvayer (University of Pennsylvania), and will work to increase participation, inclusion, reproducibility, and transparency in science.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.