CAREER: Linking microevolution to macroevolution using a high resolution, long term fossil stickleback dataset

该奖项全部或部分由2021年美国救援计划法案（公法117-2）资助。生物学家能否利用目前对种群的了解以及作用于它们的力量来帮助预测进化的长期结果？为了回答这个问题，PI Stuart将研究三棘棘鱼（Gasterosteus doryssus）的进化史。斯图尔特将测量早期人口的特征，并测试这些信息是否允许人们预测人口轨迹结束时观察到的进化。能够对进化进行预测是非常重要的，因为它涉及到流行病预测，传染病和癌症药物的设计，以及预测农业和农业害虫将如何应对人类活动。因此，该项目与国家健康，繁荣和福利有关。利用博物馆收藏化石G.斯图尔特将测量约4,500条鱼的19个解剖学特征，这些鱼的采样具有连续性、分辨率和时间长度，这在对现存或灭绝物种的研究中是罕见的。因为斯图亚特是通过时间直接观察单一血统的进化，所以祖先的形式是已知的。因此，斯图尔特可以更好地询问进化变化的速率，选择如何塑造进化趋势，祖先性状相关性如何约束进化，以及约束本身是否进化。这种研究生物体具有作为棘鱼和家庭的一部分的额外优势，该家庭的进化，生态学，遗传学和发育已经在生活种群中进行了彻底的研究。因此，斯图尔特可以将观察到的变化置于G中。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).Can biologists use current knowledge of populations and the forces acting on them to help predict long-term outcomes of evolution? To answer this question, PI Stuart will study 20,000 years of evolution in a fossilized lineage of Three spine Stickleback fish (Gasterosteus doryssus). Stuart will measure characteristics of the early population and test whether that information allows one to predict the evolution observed by the end of the population’s trajectory. Being able to make predictions about evolution is highly relevant as it relates to pandemic forecasting, the design of medicines for infectious disease and cancer, as well as predicting how agriculture and agricultural pests will respond to human activity. As such, this project has relevance to national health, prosperity, and welfare. Using a museum collection of fossil G. doryssus, Stuart will measure 19 anatomical traits from ~4,500 fish sampled at a continuity, resolution, and length of time rarely available in studies of living or extinct species. Because Stuart is observing evolution directly in a single lineage through time, the ancestral form is known. Thus, Stuart can better ask about rates of evolutionary change, how selection shaped evolutionary trends, how ancestral trait correlations constrained evolution, and whether a constraint itself evolved. This study organism has the added strength of being a stickleback and part of a family whose evolution, ecology, genetics, and development have been thoroughly studied in living populations. As such, Stuart can place observed change in G. doryssus into a broader biological context to better answer whether macroevolution is microevolution predictably writ large.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.