BII: Evolving Meta-Ecosystems in the Arctic

进化生态系统研究所(EvoME)将研究全球气候变化对北极生态系统的影响。生态系统是复杂的物种群落，它们彼此进化，并在很长一段时间内共同生活在一起。了解这些系统如何随着时间的推移而变化是生物学领域的一项重大挑战，快速的气候变化使这一挑战变得紧迫并与政策相关。这在北极尤其如此，北极变暖的速度至少是全球平均速度的三倍。北极生态系统特别适合其极端环境，它们为人类社区提供食物和生计。关键是要知道物种和生态系统是否能够进化以适应变化的速度，或者它们是否会在减少的状态下分崩离析或得过且过。EvoME将汇集来自生物学科的专家，从基因到景观，在每个尺度上产生新的见解。它将记录河流和河边冻土带环境中多种物种的自然反应，并对生态系统之间的能量和基因流动进行大规模实验。EvoME将通过跨学科和跨机构的课程、学生研究基金和研究员计划，培养接受跨学科思维和工作培训的新一代生物学家，特别关注增加吸纳和留住来自代表性不足背景的研究人员。最后，它将把记者带入研究过程，通过博客、社交媒体和广播故事创造-并帮助研究人员创造-创新的媒体和故事，将EvoME的综合理解带给公众，包括农村和阿拉斯加原住民社区。EvoME研究所跨生物学学科和组织规模进行整合，以了解适应性进化如何维持和塑造通过进化的有机体和能量(元生态系统)的流动连接的生态系统，以应对气候变化。进化可以迅速发生的新证据要求对长期存在的范式进行重大重新评估，即生态系统和元生态系统的复原力可以在没有进化的情况下被理解。EvoME通过从基因到元生态系统的整合来促进生态进化理论和理解，以了解每个生物水平是如何相互作用的。通过这样做，该研究所在地球上变暖最快的地方解决了基因组学、分子遗传学、进化论、生理学、行为学、种群和群落生态学以及生态系统生物学等基本问题。EvoME将评估沿阿拉斯加北部纬度梯度整合北极生态系统的关键物种目前的适应能力，包括利用北极温泉人口的见解。EvoME将进行元生态系统实验，以操纵河流/河岸系统中的能量(垃圾和昆虫迁移、包容/排除)和基因(移植和公共花园)流动。它将把这些信息与强大的全基因组评估和模型结合起来，以理清食物链反应与进化相互作用的过程，并改变潜在的特征和生态系统反应。EvoME还将开发新的生物监测设备、计算算法和新的建模技术，以开发灵活和适应性强的预测工具。通过这些方式，EvoME将有助于对地球元生态系统对气候变化的联合生态和进化响应的更广泛、更机械和更具预测性的理解。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The Evolving MetaEcosystems (EvoME) Institute will study the effects of global climate change on Arctic ecosystems. Ecosystems are complex communities of species that have evolved with each other and their shared environment over long periods of time. Understanding how these systems change over time is a Grand Challenge in Biology that is made urgent and policy-relevant by rapid climate change. This is particularly true in the Arctic, which is warming at least three times faster than the global average. Arctic ecosystems are uniquely suited to their extreme environment, and they provide food and livelihoods for human communities. It is critical to know whether species and ecosystems can evolve to match the pace of change, or whether they might fall apart or muddle along in a reduced state. EvoME will bring together experts from across biological disciplines to generate new insights at every scale, from genes to landscapes. It will document natural responses of multiple species in rivers and streamside tundra environments and conduct large-scale experiments on the flow of energy and genes between ecosystems. EvoME will foster a new generation of biologists trained to think and work across disciplines, with special attention to increasing inclusion and retention of researchers from underrepresented backgrounds, by a cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional course, a research fund for students, and a Fellows program. Finally, it will bring journalists into the research process to create—and help researchers create—innovative media and stories through blogs, social media, and radio stories that bring EvoME’s integrated understanding to public audiences, including rural and Alaska Native communities.The EvoME Institute integrates across biological disciplines and scales of organization to understand how adaptive evolution maintains and shapes ecosystems linked by the flow of evolving organisms and energy (the meta-ecosystem) in response to climate change. New evidence that evolution can occur rapidly necessitates a major reappraisal of the longstanding paradigm that ecosystem and meta-ecosystem resilience can be understood without evolution. EvoME advances eco-evolutionary theory and understanding by integrating from genes to meta-ecosystems to understand how each biological level interacts with the others. In doing so, this institute addresses fundamental questions in genomics, molecular genetics, evolution, physiology, behavior, population and community ecology, and ecosystem biology in the most rapidly warming place on Earth. EvoME will evaluate the current adaptive capacity of key species that integrate Arctic ecosystems along a latitudinal gradient in northern Alaska, including leveraging insights from populations living in hot springs in the Arctic. EvoME will conduct metaecosystem experiments that manipulate energy (litter and insect migration inclusion/exclusion) and gene (transplant and common garden) flow in river/riparian systems. It will combine this information with powerful whole-genome assessments and models to disentangle the processes through which food web responses interact with evolution and alter underlying trait and ecosystem responses. EvoME also will develop novel bio-monitoring equipment, computational algorithms, and new modeling techniques to develop flexible and adaptable forecasting tools. In these ways, EvoME will contribute to a broader, mechanistic, and predictive understanding of the joint ecological and evolutionary responses of Earth’s meta-ecosystems to climate change.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.