NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2016

博士后：Emily MeinekeProposal编号：1611880该奖项资助NSF 2016财年生物学博士后研究奖学金，使用生物收藏进行跨学科研究该奖学金支持一项研究和培训计划，让该研究员采取变革性的方法来应对生物学中的重大挑战，以高度创新的方式利用生物收藏。为艾米丽·梅内克设立的这项研究计划的标题是“利用博物馆标本探索气候变化是否增加了森林病虫害。”该奖学金的主办机构是哥本哈根大学，赞助科学家是艾米·克拉森和内森·桑德斯。该项目解决了人类驱动的气候变化如何影响破坏人类赖以生存的植物物种的食草动物物种这一根本问题。全球气候变化已经导致食草性昆虫的爆发频率更高。然而，关于慢性的、非暴发的食草动物如何对气候做出反应的了解较少。特别是，人们对寄居在植物上的本土昆虫知之甚少，这些昆虫终生以植物为食，历史上对植物没有造成或造成轻微损害。慢性食草动物及其损害往往被无意地保存在植物标本上或标本中，即保存在博物馆中的植物标本。这位科学家利用北欧丰富的森林树木标本，利用标本馆标本追踪几个世纪以来和整个欧洲的慢性食草动物。她还在利用现有的公民科学平台扩大这个项目，从北美和澳大利亚的标本中收集同样的数据。由于这位研究员的研究有助于理解气候是如何影响害虫的，它也将告诉我们，在我们赖以生存的其他系统中，害虫的损害可能会如何变化，包括农业。这位研究员正在通过四个关键方式扩大她的科学培训：(1)扩大她的研究计划，将国际(欧洲)地点包括在内；(2)使用她在论文研究中使用的建模框架，但在更大的空间和时间尺度上；(3)培养国际合作者网络；以及(4)创建和执行一个独特的国际公民科学项目，生成大陆范围的数据。该项目允许公众参与全球变化研究，并通过这样做，促进两个美国公民科学努力之间的联系，来自自然的笔记和您的野生生活，以及全球知名的欧洲研究机构哥本哈根大学。这位研究员正在为公民科学家创造产品，如在线、互动地图和图形，这些产品允许公众与数据互动。在你的野生生活中，这个家伙正在设计和评估我们的广告努力，以最大限度地增加生物学中代表性不足的群体的参与。

Postdoctoral Fellow: Emily MeinekeProposal number: 1611880This award funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2016, Interdisciplinary Research Using Biological Collections The fellowship supports a research and training plan for the Fellow to take transformative approaches to grand challenges in biology that employ biological collections in highly innovative ways. The title of the research plan for this fellowship to Emily Meineke is "Using museum specimens to explore if climate change has increased insect pest damage to forests." The host institution for this fellowship is the University of Copenhagen, and the sponsoring scientists are Aimee Classen and Nathan Sanders. This project addresses the fundamental question of how climate change driven by humans affect herbivore species that damage plant species on which humans rely. Global climate change has already led to higher outbreak frequencies in insect herbivores. However, less is known about how chronic, non-outbreak herbivores respond to climate. In particular, little is known about resident, native insects that live on plants for the duration of their lives and historically have caused no or minor damage to plants. Chronic herbivores and their damage are often unintentionally preserved on or in herbarium specimens, i.e. plant specimens preserved in museums. The Fellow is using herbarium specimens to track chronic herbivory over centuries and across Europe, taking advantage of northern Europe's expansive collection of forest tree specimens. She is also expanding this project using an existing citizen science platform to collect this same data from North American and Australian specimens. Because the Fellow's research contributes to the understanding of how climate has affected insect pests, it will also inform how insect pest damage might change in other systems on which we depend, including agriculture. The Fellow is expanding her scientific training in four key ways: (1) expanding her research program to include international (European) sites, (2) using modeling frameworks she used in her dissertation research but over much larger scales of space and time, (3) cultivating an international network of collaborators, and (4) creating and executing a unique, international citizen science project that generates continental-scale data. This project allows the public to participate in global change research and, in doing so, fosters connections between two US citizen science efforts, Notes from Nature and Your Wild Life, and a globally renowned European research institution, the University of Copenhagen. The Fellow is creating products for citizen scientist, such as online, interactive maps and figure, which allow the public to interact with data. With Your Wild Life, the Fellow is designing and evaluating our advertising efforts to maximize participation by groups underrepresented in biology.