NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2020: Investigating maternally-mediated developmental plasticity and the role of the microbiome in wild red squirrels

该行动资助了NSF 2020财年生物学博士后研究奖学金，研究基因组，环境和表型之间相互作用的生命规则的综合研究。该奖学金支持将以创新方式对生活规则领域作出贡献的研究员的研究和培训。该项目旨在确定微生物群落——生活在宿主体内和体表的细菌群落——是如何联系野生红松鼠的生态变化和发育差异的。个体的微生物组部分是通过母体传播的微生物遗传的，并且可以根据环境变化而发生变化。微生物组的这些变化与发育的变化有什么关系，这些变化是优势还是劣势？这位研究员将利用在加拿大育空地区收集的野生红松鼠的长期数据来解决这些问题。红松鼠具有很强的领土意识，在食物供应方面会经历极端的波动，这使它们成为研究微生物群如何对生态和社会变化做出反应的绝佳模型。这项研究将为了解微生物如何促进动物适应不断变化的环境的进化过程提供关键的见解。该研究员将在该项目的各个方面包括第一代和代表性不足的学生，并通过旨在使当地社区参与科学进程的各种现有体制机制传播主要研究成果。本研究综合了多个领域的理论和方法，将高分辨率基因组学与无创激素分析相结合，同时将数据置于生态进化框架内。本研究将通过对种群密度和食物可得性的实验操作，1)探索激素对生态变化的反应与微生物组之间的相互作用，2)研究微生物从母亲到后代的垂直传播，3)测试微生物变化是否预测后代生长速度的变化。然后，该项目将利用现有的纵向数据和一项新的交叉培育实验，通过测试微生物群与领地获取、首次繁殖的存活率和寿命之间的关系，评估微生物变化的适应价值。该研究员将接受基因组学、内分泌学、进化生物学和生态学领域的综合培训，数据将生成并存档，以最大限度地再现性和可访问性。服务不足的社区和第一代学生将通过实践小项目、机构指导计划和公民科学社区推广红松鼠计划参与这项研究。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。

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 project aims to identify how the microbiome—the community of bacteria living in and on a host—connects ecological change and developmental differences in wild red squirrels. An individual’s microbiome is inherited in part through maternally-transmitted microbes and can shift in response to environmental changes. How do these shifts in the microbiome relate to variation in development, and are these changes an advantage or disadvantage? The fellow will address these questions using long-term data collected on wild red squirrels living in the Yukon, Canada. Red squirrels are highly territorial and experience exreme fluctuations in food availability, making them an excellent model to examine how the microbiome responds to ecological and social change. This research will provide critical insight into how microbes contribute to the evolutionary processes that allow animals to adapt to changing environments. The fellow will include first-generation and underrepresented students in various aspects of this project and disseminate primary research findings through various existing institutional mechanisms aimed at engaging local communities in the scientific process. This research synthesizes theory and methods from multiple fields, combining high-resolution genomics with noninvasive hormone analyses while situating the data within an eco-evolutionary framework. This study will use experimental manipulations of population density and food availability to 1) probe interactions between hormonal responses to ecological change and the microbiome, 2) investigate the vertical transmission of microbes from mothers to offspring, and 3) test whether microbial changes predict variation in offspring growth rates. This project will then assess the adaptive value of microbial changes by 4) testing how the microbiome relates to territory acquisition, survival to first breeding, and longevity using both existing longitudinal data and a novel cross-fostering experiment. The fellow will receive integrative training across the fields of genomics, endocrinology, evolutionary biology, and ecology and data will be generated and archived for maximum reproducibility and accessibility. Underserved communities and first-generation students will be engaged in this research through hands-on mini-projects, institutional mentorship programs, and a citizen science community outreach program on red squirrels.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.