Collaborative Proposal: RoL: The Scale of Resistance: Landscape to Microbiome-level Processes Regulating Acquired Disease Resistance

了解物种在全球变化时代如何科普疾病，对生态学领域和野生动物种群的稳定具有根本重要性。人为砍伐森林往往与野生动物疾病的增加有关。这些模式预计源于两个小规模的过程，如动物运动和疾病传播的变化，以及精细尺度的过程，如栖息在动物组织中的微生物群落（统称为微生物组）的变化，但这些多尺度过程之间的相互作用尚未得到解决。该项目调查了森林砍伐和微生物组之间的关系，以解释在一系列受干扰的环境中疾病出现的模式，使用巴西大西洋森林的两栖动物作为模型系统。这里的工作与以前的研究不同，将微生物规模和微生物规模的过程整合到一个统一的框架中，这将促进微生物，疾病和全球变化生态学。该项目在亚拉巴马大学的路易斯·斯托克斯少数民族参与方案联盟和马萨诸塞大学波士顿分校的其他资金来源的支持下，实施了一项研究生多样性招聘方案。与亚拉巴马自然历史博物馆合作，将制造和实施便携式迷你展览和学校活动，以缩小全国服务最不足地区之一的K-12科学教育差距。据预测，这些展览将达到66，000名学生每年在五个县学区在亚拉巴马。栖息在脊椎动物宿主的微生物的多样组合，统称为微生物组，对动物健康至关重要。然而，宿主微生物组和新出现的野生动物疾病之间的联系很少在景观生态学框架内考虑。反复暴露于病原体可能会改变宿主微生物组内的群落动态，并可能促进竞争性微生物相互作用和宿主反应，从而可能使微生物组富含抗病原体成员。这种形式的获得性病原体抗性，称为微生物组记忆，可以促进宿主恢复，并在随后的病原体暴露后引发宿主。众所周知，人为栖息地碎片化限制了景观尺度上的宿主移动，这可能会改变病原体暴露率，而病原体暴露率对于在病原体压力季节性增加之前建立微生物组记忆至关重要。该项目将调查人为栖息地干扰和宿主微生物组动态的相互影响，作为一种机制来解释在破碎的景观中观察到的疾病风险增加，使用巴西大西洋森林的两栖动物作为模型系统。选择作用于两栖动物皮肤微生物群落的调查中的三种两栖动物的季节性病原体动态梯度的景观破碎化将进行检查。此外，将使用微生物组操纵，宿主易位和无线电遥测进行田间实验，以测试与栖息地碎片化，疾病和宿主微生物组独立于宿主免疫力的其他成分相关的机制。这项工作将产生一个强大的数据集，将景观生态学与适应性微生物组的代谢生态学理论相结合，对宿主的抗病能力以及生物多样性的维持和稳定产生新的影响。该奖项反映了NSF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。

Understanding how species cope with disease in an era of global change is of fundamental importance to the field of ecology and to the stability of wildlife populations. Anthropogenic deforestation is frequently associated with increases in wildlife disease. These patterns are expected to stem from both landscape-scale processes, such as changes in animal movement and disease transmission, and fine-scale processes, such as changes in the community of microbes that inhabit animal tissues (collectively termed the microbiome), but the interplay between these multi-scale processes is unresolved. This project investigates the relationship between deforestation and the microbiome to explain patterns of disease emergence across a range of disturbed environments, using amphibians of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest as a model system. Work here stands apart from previous studies by integrating landscape-scale and microbe-scale processes into a unified framework that will advance microbial, disease, and global change ecology. This project implements a diversity recruitment program for graduate students with support from the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation Program at the University of Alabama and other funding sources at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. In partnership with the Alabama Museum of Natural History, portable mini exhibits and school activities w will be manufactured and implemented to narrow the K-12 science education gap in one of the most underserved areas in the nation. It is predicted that these exhibits will reach 66,000 students annually in five county school districts in Alabama.The diverse assemblages of microbes that inhabit vertebrate hosts, collectively termed the microbiome, are vital to animal health. However, links between the host microbiome and emerging wildlife diseases are rarely considered within a landscape ecology framework. Repeated exposure to pathogens may alter community dynamics within the host microbiome and can promote competitive microbial interactions and host responses that may enrich the microbiome with anti-pathogen members. This form of acquired pathogen resistance, termed microbiome memory, may facilitate host recovery and prime the host after subsequent pathogen exposures. Anthropogenic habitat fragmentation notoriously restricts host movement at the landscape scale, which may alter rates of pathogen exposure that are critical for establishing microbiome memory prior to seasonal increases in pathogen pressure. This project will investigate interactive effects of anthropogenic habitat disturbance and host microbiome dynamics as a mechanism to explain observed increases in disease risk in fragmented landscapes, using amphibians of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest as a model system. The selection acting on amphibian skin microbiomes in a survey of three amphibian species with seasonal pathogen dynamics across a gradient of landscape fragmentation will be examined. Also, field experiments will be conducted using microbiome manipulation, host translocation, and radio telemetry to test for mechanisms linking habitat fragmentation, disease, and the host microbiome independently from other components of host immunity. This work will generate a robust dataset integrating landscape ecology with a metacommunity theory of adaptive microbiomes, with novel implications for host resistance to disease and the maintenance and stability of biological diversity.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.