BRC-BIO: Success in the Anthropocene: Evolutionary Ecology of the Common Wall Lizard in Ohio

地球气候和生态系统的巨大变化给许多生物带来了挑战，但有些物种显然在这些新环境中茁壮成长。一个例子是普通壁虎，一种小型的，活跃的蜥蜴物种，原产于欧洲大陆，但最近在英国，加拿大和美国建立了。这里描述的研究项目试图找出这个物种在引入如此少的动物后，在新大陆的新城市环境中蓬勃发展的原因。具体来说，这项研究将利用野外观察和实验室实验，包括行为、生理和身体尺寸的测量，来描述对新气候和改变的自然栖息地结构的反应。此外，该研究将采用新的进展来识别与这些特定特征相关的基因，以及这些特征如何帮助蜥蜴自引入以来在整个景观中扩张。然后，这些信息可以在管理工作中加以利用，以防止潜在有害入侵物种的传播，或者了解我们想要保护的生物如何应对环境的变化。这里建立的基础设施和系统将构成一个长期、可持续的本科生研究项目的基础，该项目将成为其他机构的典范，特别注重为代表性不足的少数民族增加在STEM领域的参与和成功。这个研究项目将提供一个生态背景和进化过程的综合理解，这些过程塑造了在一个新的环境中成功建立的脊椎动物变温动物，普通壁虎（Podarcis muralis）。该研究将通过(1)量化温度调节行为和热依赖性状，以评估可塑性和适应性在城市景观中茁壮成长的能力中的相对影响，从而深入了解复杂的生物表型是如何在进化过程中形成的，以及它们如何应对新的生态环境；(2)在生态相关的背景下识别形态-性能关系，以测试时间和空间上的形态变化，然后评估这些变化是否有助于入侵成功和预测未来的扩张；(3)利用全基因组重测序来检验关于在基因组水平上对功能和中性变异水平的影响的假设，以及这如何影响关键的进化过程。这项工作利用了最新的技术进步，并将验证新的方法，为未来的研究提供资源，包括使用红外热成像、微传感器温度变送器、运动建模的新应用、基因组测序技术和分析管道。这种整体方法促进了我们对生物如何与新环境相互作用的理解，并为表征表型和基因组质量提供了概念基础，从而促进了在新的或不断变化的环境中取得成功。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。

Large changes to our planet’s climate and ecosystems have presented challenges to many organisms, yet some species are apparently thriving in these new environments. One example is the Common Wall Lizard, a small, active lizard species native to mainland Europe but recently established in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the US. The research project described here seeks to identify the reasons that this species has flourished in novel urban environments on a new continent after an introduction of so few animals. Specifically, this research will leverage field observations and lab experiments including measures of behavior, physiology, and body dimensions to describe responses to new climates and altered physical habitat structure. Additionally, the research will employ new advances to identify genes related to these specific traits and how these traits have helped lizards expand across the landscape since their introduction. This information can then be leveraged in management efforts to prevent the spread of potentially harmful invasive species or to understand how organisms we want to protect may respond to changes in their environment. The infrastructure and systems established here will form the foundation of a long-term, sustainable research program for undergraduate students that will be a model for other institutions, with a specific focus on increased participation and success in STEM fields for underrepresented minorities.This research program will provide an integrative understanding of the ecological context and evolutionary processes that shape the successful establishment of a vertebrate ectotherm, the Common Wall Lizard (Podarcis muralis), in a novel environment. The research will provide insight into how complex organismal phenotypes are shaped by evolutionary processes and how they respond to new ecological situations by (1) quantifying thermoregulatory behaviors and thermally-dependent traits to assess the relative influence of plasticity and adaptation in the ability of P. muralis to thrive in urban landscapes; (2) identifying morphology-performance relationships in ecologically-relevant contexts to test for morphological shifts in time and space and then assess whether these shifts contribute to invasion success and can predict future expansion; and (3) utilizing whole-genome resequencing to test hypotheses regarding the impact of the founding event on functional and neutral levels of variation at the genomic level and how this has impacted key evolutionary processes. This work leverages recent technological advances and will validate new approaches to provide resources for future studies, including the use of infrared thermography, microsensor temperature transmitters, novel application of movement modelling, and genomic sequencing technologies and analysis pipelines. This holistic approach advances our understanding of how organisms interact with novel environments and provides a conceptual basis for characterizing the phenotypic and genomic qualities that facilitate success in new or changing environments.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.