CAREER: From Genes to Assemblages: Causes and Consequences of Spatiotemporal Population Variation Across Millennia in Small Mammals

了解物种如何应对环境变化，以及这些反应的长期后果，对于妥善管理未来的生物多样性非常重要。利用美国西部最近过去(跨越过去21,000年的环境变化)的小型哺乳动物化石种群，该项目将探索不同物种和群落适应未来环境变化的能力及其灭绝的可能性。研究成果将通过大学生和更广泛的公众转化为中学生的循证教育活动，旨在提高公众的科学素养。物种生态位和群落环境相互作用，塑造物种对环境变化的反应，这些反应的生态和进化遗产将在未来多年持续存在。为了调查种群水平对长期变化的反应的驱动因素和结果，我们将挖掘美国西部跨越过去1000年的小型哺乳动物化石沉积物，并与之前在加利福尼亚州北部挖掘的沉积物进行比较。气候、环境生态位和生物相互作用对形成跨越空间和时间的种群丰度变异性的相对影响将被量化。然后，将确定种群水平丰度的变化对组成、功能和遗传结构以及随时间变化的多样性的影响。最后，这些模式将被预测到未来，以确定环境变化可能如何影响未来种群和群落的生态和进化结构。研究成果将被开发成初中和高中课堂以及更广泛的公众的教学模块。与此同时，PI将修改她的本科课程，以适应积极学习和循证教学技术的框架。总体而言，该项目将显著促进对物种对气候变化反应的模式、过程和结果的理解，以及公众的科学素养。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。

Understanding how species respond to environmental change, and the long-term consequences of those responses, is important for appropriately managing biodiversity for the future. Using fossilized small mammal populations from the recent past (spanning the environmental changes of the last 21,000 years) in the western United States, this project will explore the ability of different species and communities to adapt to future environmental changes and their likelihood of extinction. The research findings will be translated into evidence-based educational activities for middle school through college students and the broader public, aiming to increase scientific literacy of the public. Species niches and community context interact to shape species responses to environmental change, and the ecological and evolutionary legacies of these responses will persist for many years into the future. To investigate the drivers and outcomes of population-level responses to long-term change, small mammal fossil deposits in the western US spanning the past 1000s of years will be excavated, and compared to previously excavated deposits from northern California. The relative influence of climate, environmental niches, and biotic interactions on shaping variability in population abundances across space and time will be quantified. Then, the influence of population-level abundance changes on compositional, functional and genetic structure and diversity through time will be determined. Finally, these patterns will be forecast to the future to determine how environmental change may influence the ecological and evolutionary structure of future populations and assemblages. The research findings will be developed into teaching modules for middle and high-school classrooms and the broader public. In parallel, the PI will revise her undergraduate classes to fit a framework of active learning and evidence-based pedagogical techniques. Overall, this project will significantly advance understanding of the patterns, processes, and outcomes of species responses to climate change, as well as the scientific literacy of the public.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.