Collaborative Research: IRES Track I: Odonata morphological adaptations to environmental gradients in Ghana: integrating student research in the field, museum, and laboratory

合作研究：IRES 第一轨：蜻蜓目形态对加纳环境梯度的适应：整合学生在现场、博物馆和实验室的研究

• 批准号: 2246258
• 负责人: Jessica Ware
• 金额: $ 1.71万
• 依托单位: American Museum Natural History
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-06-01 至 2026-05-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2246258&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; IRES; Track; Odonata

Global climate change has had profound impacts on food and water availability, habitat availability, and infrastructure vulnerability, while threatening biodiversity across all ecological scales. In this collaborative IRES project, researchers will study the response and adaptation of dragonflies in different climactic habitats, with the goal of broadening our understanding of the effects of regional and global environmental change on biodiversity. The project will recruit 18 U.S. student researchers to work on projects that are critically important to document and preserve biodiversity and understand the adaptations that allow successful colonization during rapid environmental change. Students will be recruited from traditionally underrepresented groups to build capacity, thereby increasing inclusion, equity, and innovation in the broader research community. Further, students from both the U.S. and Ghana will be mentored by a diverse, interdisciplinary, multi-institutional, and international team, gaining a high degree of professional and personal development through exposure to a variety of expertise at different types of institutions and in different research contexts. Fostering international collaborations is a necessary step for worldwide conservation of biodiversity due to climate change, and this program will facilitate such an endeavor, as the research is a collaboration among three institutions, The Pennsylvania State University, the American Museum of Natural History, and the international host institution University of Cape Coast in Ghana. This collaboration will allow us to leverage student and faculty capacities built over the course of the project to extend to other countries that share similar ecological concerns. West Africa is thought to be one of the world’s most vulnerable regions to the effects of anthropogenic environmental change and subsequent loss in biodiversity. However, there remains a paucity of information on insect species biodiversity and their distribution in the region, how rapid environmental change affects those assemblages, and the morphological adaptations that may allow insects to adapt to a changing environment. This project will exploit naturally occurring climate ecozones within a small geographic range in Ghana to assess the effects of environmental change, both natural and anthropogenic, on odonate biodiversity and community structuring. Additionally, the project will assess the wing and neural adaptations that contribute to successful colonization of diverse habitats, which may predict insect survival and colonization in a rapidly changing environment. In view of Ghana’s rapid habitat losses and quickly changing landscape, this project offers the first comprehensive faunal studies for databasing, future monitoring, and conservation of the undocumented and underrepresented odonata species of Ghana. Leveraging methodology from material sciences and neurobiology, this project also will link phenotypic variation in morphological attributes (e.g., optical properties, durability of wings, mushroom bodies) with variation in environmental factors across the three ecozones of Ghana. Doing so will elucidate which morphological characteristics allow successful colonization of different habitat types. Overall, this project will extend our knowledge on the effects of environmental change on odonata distributions, as well as the morphological adaptations that correlate with variation in environmental factors.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.

全球气候变化对粮食和水的可用性，栖息地的可用性和基础设施脆弱性产生了深远的影响，同时威胁着所有生态规模的生物多样性。在这个合作的IRES项目中，研究人员将研究不同高潮栖息地中蜻蜓的反应和适应，以扩大我们对区域和全球环境变化对生物多样性影响的理解。该项目将招募18名美国学生研究人员从事对记录和保留生物多样性至关重要的项目，并了解允许在快速环境变化期间成功殖民的改编。将从传统上代表性不足的群体中招募学生来增强能力，从而增加更广泛的研究社区的包容性，公平性和创新。此外，来自美国和加纳的学生将通过多样性，跨学科，多机构和国际团队来考虑，通过在不同类型的机构和不同研究环境中接触各种专家，从而获得了高度的专业和个人发展。促进国际合作是由于气候变化而进行的全球生物多样性保护的必要步骤，该计划将促进这项工作，因为这项研究是三个机构之间的合作，即宾夕法尼亚州立大学，美国自然历史博物馆和加拿大国际喀特大学的国际托管学会。这项合作将使我们能够利用在项目过程中建立的学生和教职员工，以扩展到与其他生态问题的其他国家。人们认为西非是世界上最脆弱的地区之一，即人为环境变化以及随后生物多样性损失的影响。但是，关于昆虫物种生物多样性及其在该地区的分布，环境变化如何影响这些组合以及可能使昆虫适应不断变化的环境的形态适应的信息仍然很少。该项目将探索加纳较小地理范围内的自然气候生态环境，以评估自然和人为变化对odonate生物多样性和社区结构的影响。此外，该项目将评估有助于潜水员栖息地的成功定植的机翼和中性适应，这可能会预测在迅速变化的环境中的绝缘和定殖。鉴于加纳的快速栖息地损失和快速变化的景观，该项目提供了第一个全面的动物研究研究，用于对加纳的无证件和代表性不足的Odonata物种进行数据表，未来监测和保护。该项目从物质科学和神经生物学中利用方法也将将形态学属性的表型变化（例如，光学性质，翅膀的耐用性，肌肉体）与加纳三个生态因素的环境因素的变化联系起来。这样做将阐明哪种形态特征允许成功定植不同的栖息地类型。总体而言，该项目将扩展我们对环境变化对ODONATA分布的影响的了解，以及与环境因素变化相关的形态适应。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是通过基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛影响的审查标准通过评估来通过评估来支持的。