RoL: Collaborative Proposal: Integrating responses to environmental change across the biological hierarchy: interactions between behavior, plasticity, and genetic change

RoL：协作提案：整合整个生物层次对环境变化的响应：行为、可塑性和遗传变化之间的相互作用

• 批准号: 2024109
• 负责人: William McMillan
• 金额: $ 35.29万
• 依托单位: Smithsonian Institution
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-12-01 至 2025-11-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2024109&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: RoL; Collaborative; Proposal; Integrating; responses

The environments in which animals live are changing rapidly as a result of human actions, but species have also had to deal with rapidly changing environments during Earth’s past, long before humans were on the scene. Species have adapted to abrupt climate oscillations during the Pleistocene and to novel environments when they colonized new land masses via natural dispersal events. Thus, adaptation to rapid environmental change is an important phenomenon that many species have experienced throughout their evolutionary history. Nevertheless, scientists lack a detailed understanding of the factors that allow some species to avoid extinction during environmental upheaval, while others perish. One major reason that faster progress has not been made in this field is that organisms can respond in several distinct ways when their environments begin to change. Some of these responses, like behavioral adjustments, occur within the lifetime of individual organisms, whereas others, like genetic adaptation, occur over multiple generations. Critically, these responses can interact in complex ways, and to truly understand how species adapt to rapid environmental change we must examine when and how these various responses interact in the wild. This project leverages a unique field experiment to directly measure the responses of wild animals to abrupt shifts in their local environments. The researchers will transplant hundreds of slender anole lizards from a population on mainland Panama to islands in the Panama Canal. These islands differ in their environments. The researchers will then measure behavioral, genetic, and physiological responses in real time to understand how species can adapt to rapid environmental change. The results of this study will be used to help improve predictions of the responses of species to human driven phenomena like climate change, and to understand why some species have gone extinct during prehistoric periods of environmental change whereas others persisted. Finally, the researchers will implement their Evolution in Action (EIA) program, which includes an online, live-action children’s science education show where student scientists from diverse backgrounds will interact with the public.We currently lack a compelling framework by which to understand and predict the responses of populations to rapid changes in their environment because studies 1) rarely consider the simultaneous impact of rapid environmental change on multiple levels of the biological hierarchy (e.g. genes, individuals, populations), 2) are infrequently conducted on contemporary time scales, and 3) tend to focus on one adaptive process (e.g. genetic change) to the exclusion of others (e.g. behavior) when these processes are likely to interact in dynamic feedback loops. For this project, researchers will move Anolis lizards from a single source population to islands in the Panama Canal that vary in habitat structure and climate. They will combine a diverse array of field and laboratory studies to understand how interactions between behavior, plasticity, and genetic change mediate population persistence when environments change. The results of this project will lend themselves towards next-generation predictive models for the responses of organisms to human-mediated environmental change and may reveal new rules by which cross-generational processes such as behavioral inertia and genetic accommodation mediate extinction risk during rapid environmental change.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.

由于人类的活动，动物生活的环境正在迅速变化，但在地球的过去，早在人类出现之前，物种也不得不应对快速变化的环境。物种已经适应了更新世期间突然的气候振荡，并通过自然扩散事件在新的陆地上定居。因此，适应快速的环境变化是一个重要的现象，许多物种都经历了整个进化史。尽管如此，科学家们对某些物种在环境剧变中避免灭绝而另一些物种灭绝的因素缺乏详细的了解。这一领域没有取得更快进展的一个主要原因是，当环境开始变化时，生物体可以以几种不同的方式作出反应。其中一些反应，如行为调整，发生在个体生物的一生中，而另一些反应，如遗传适应，发生在多代人身上。至关重要的是，这些反应可以以复杂的方式相互作用，为了真正了解物种如何适应快速的环境变化，我们必须研究这些不同的反应何时以及如何在野外相互作用。该项目利用独特的实地实验直接测量野生动物对当地环境突变的反应。研究人员将从巴拿马大陆的一个种群中移植数百只细长的变色蜥蜴到巴拿马运河的岛屿上。这些岛屿的环境各不相同。然后，研究人员将在真实的时间内测量行为，遗传和生理反应，以了解物种如何适应快速的环境变化。这项研究的结果将用于帮助改善物种对人类驱动的气候变化等现象的反应的预测，并了解为什么有些物种在史前环境变化期间灭绝，而另一些物种则持续存在。最后，研究人员将实施他们的行动进化（EIA）计划，其中包括一个在线，真人儿童科学教育展示了来自不同背景的学生科学家将与公众互动。我们目前缺乏一个令人信服的框架来理解和预测人口对环境快速变化的反应，因为研究1）很少考虑快速环境变化对生物层次结构多个级别的同时影响（例如基因、个体、群体），2）很少在当代时间尺度上进行，3）当这些过程可能在动态反馈回路中相互作用时，倾向于专注于一个适应过程（例如遗传变化）而排除其他过程（例如行为）。在这个项目中，研究人员将把阿诺利斯蜥蜴从一个单一的来源种群迁移到巴拿马运河中的岛屿，这些岛屿的栖息地结构和气候各不相同。他们将结合联合收割机的现场和实验室研究的多样化阵列，以了解行为，可塑性和遗传变化之间的相互作用如何介导种群的持久性时，环境的变化。该项目的结果将有助于下一代生物体对人类介导的环境变化的反应的预测模型，并可能揭示新的规则，在快速的环境变化中，行为惯性和遗传适应等世代过程介导了灭绝风险。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值进行评估，被认为值得支持和更广泛的影响审查标准。