Collaborative Research: EAGER: Infrapopulation trait distributions link nutrient availability to host-parasite dynamics

寄生虫的复制率和造成的危害会受到宿主饮食营养成分的影响。然而，这些影响的大小和方向在不同的宿主和寄生虫之间存在不可预测的差异。这项研究的目的是提高我们预测特定寄生虫如何对其宿主饮食营养成分变化做出反应的能力。产生这些预测是重要的，因为人类活动为许多生态系统增加了氮和磷等营养物质，直接改变了动物饮食的营养成分。这种饮食变化可能有利于特定的寄生虫。这项研究将检验宿主饮食对寄生虫复制率的影响是由寄生虫自身营养需求的灵活性决定的假设。该项目还将改善当地高中学生的科学教育成果。两名高中生将在一个夏天成为主要研究实验室的成员，在他们的助教结束时进行一项小型研究，并在第二年向其他高中生展示他们的工作。研究人员将通过实验操纵无脊椎动物宿主饮食的营养成分，并确定宿主饮食中碳，氮和磷的相对丰度，宿主，寄生虫可以帮助预测寄生虫和宿主的结果。为了严格量化微生物寄生虫的营养成分，研究人员采用了以前用于量化自由生活微生物营养成分的能量色散光谱工作流程。测量宿主内的多个单细胞寄生虫将用于创建宿主内寄生虫种群的营养成分的性状分布。这些性状分布捕捉寄生虫营养成分的宿主内变异，这些变异将用于估计每种寄生虫营养需求的灵活性，并最终预测每种寄生虫对宿主饮食变化的反应。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智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

The replication rate and harm caused by a parasite can be affected by the nutritional content of its host’s diet. However, the magnitude and direction of these effects vary unpredictably among different hosts and parasites. The goal of this research is to improve our ability to predict how specific parasites will respond to shifts in the nutrient content of their host’s diets. Generating these predictions is important because human activities add nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus to many ecosystems, directly altering the nutrient content of the diet of animals. Such dietary shifts could favor specific parasites over others. This research will test the hypothesis that the effect of host diet on parasite replication rate is dictated by the flexibility of a parasite’s own nutritional requirements. This project will also improve science education outcomes for students at a local high school. Two high school students will become integral members of the primary research lab for a summer, conducting a small study at the end of their assistantship, and presenting their work to fellow high school students the following year.The researchers will experimentally manipulate the nutrient content of the diet of an invertebrate host and determine if the relative abundance of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus in host diets, hosts, and parasites can help predict outcomes for the parasite and host. To rigorously quantify the nutrient content of microbial parasites, the researchers have adapted an energy dispersive spectroscopy workflow previously used to quantify the nutrient content of free-living microbes. Measurements of multiple single celled parasites within a host will be used to create trait distributions of the nutrient content of parasitic populations within a host. These trait distributions capture within-host variation in parasite nutrient content which will be used to estimate the flexibility of each parasite’s nutritional requirements, and, ultimately, to predict the response of each parasite to shifts in the host’s diet.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.