Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology: Predicting Extinction Risk across Tree Pangolin Populations

该行动资助了2022财年的NSF生物学博士后研究奖学金，即调查基因组，环境和表型之间相互作用的生命规则的综合研究。该研究金支持研究员的研究和培训，以创新的方式为生活规则领域做出贡献。气候变化对全球生物多样性构成严重威胁。了解哪些物种最有可能灭绝，有助于指导有限的保护资源的分配。要估计一个物种因气候变化而灭绝的风险，就需要了解它们对气候变化的暴露程度以及它们适应新条件的能力。然而，目前对气候变化脆弱性的评估通常只考虑暴露的风险，这通常是因为确定一个物种适应新气候的能力具有挑战性。这项研究将建立一个框架，用于研究物种如何适应当地气候条件，并量化这些适应与未来气候条件之间的不匹配。该框架将用于评估气候变化对物种灭绝的风险。该研究员将以濒临灭绝的树穿山甲（Phataginus tricuspis）作为案例研究。树穿山甲广泛分布在西非和中非的几个不同的气候带，并显示出强大的种群遗传结构。来自其范围内的全基因组数据将用于识别与气候相关的适应性基因组变异。这些关联将用于计算当前和未来气候之间的等位基因不匹配，从而估计基因组对未来气候变化的脆弱性。最后，该研究员将直接比较传统的、仅基于确定性的模型预测的未来栖息地数量与这种适应性模型预测的数量，以量化包括进化过程在内的预测如何变化。通过在种群水平上评估灭绝风险，这项工作将确定保护干预措施的高优先级种群。将与在该地区工作的利益攸关方分享可采取行动的保护建议。这项工作将产生一个基因组学管道，用于评估其他适应当地气候变化的种群的灭绝风险。该奖项反映了NSF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支持。

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2022, 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. Climate changes poses a grave threat to global biodiversity. Understanding which species are most at risk of extinction can help guide the allocation of limited conservation resources. Estimating a species’ extinction risk from climate change requires an understanding of their exposure to changing climate and of their ability to adapt to new conditions. However, current assessments of vulnerability to climate change usually only consider the risk from exposure, often because determining a species’ ability to adapt to novel climate is challenging. This research will develop a framework for studying how species adapt to local climate conditions and for quantifying the mismatch between those adaptations and future climate conditions. This framework will be used to estimate species’ extinction risk from climate change.The fellow will use the endangered tree pangolin (Phataginus tricuspis) as a case study. The tree pangolin is broadly distributed across several different climatic zones across Western and Central Africa and shows strong population genetic structure. Whole genomic data from across their range will be used to identify adaptive genomic variation associated with climate. These associations will be used to calculate the allelic mismatch between current and future climate, thus estimating genomic vulnerability to future climate change. Finally, the fellow will directly compare the amount of future habitat predicted by traditional, exposure-only models with that predicted by this adaptation-informed model to quantify how including evolutionary process changes predictions. By assessing extinction risk at the population level, this work will identify high-priority populations for conservation interventions. Actionable conservation recommendations will be shared with stakeholders working in the region. This work will produce a genomics pipeline for assessing extinction risk from climate change in other locally adapted populations.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.