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

了解物种如何在全球变化的时代应对疾病，对于生态学领域和野生动物种群的稳定具有至关重要的意义。人为砍伐森林往往与野生动物疾病的增加有关。这些模式预计既源于景观尺度的过程，如动物运动和疾病传播的变化，也源于精细尺度的过程，如栖息在动物组织(统称为微生物组)中的微生物群落的变化，但这些多尺度过程之间的相互作用尚未解决。该项目以巴西大西洋森林的两栖动物为模型系统，调查森林砍伐和微生物群落之间的关系，以解释一系列受干扰环境中的疾病出现模式。这里的工作与以前的研究不同，它将景观规模和微生物规模的过程整合到一个统一的框架中，将促进微生物、疾病和全球变化生态的发展。该项目在阿拉巴马大学的路易斯·斯托克斯少数族裔参与计划和马萨诸塞大学波士顿分校的其他资金来源的支持下，为研究生实施了一个多元化招生计划。与阿拉巴马州自然历史博物馆合作，将制作和实施便携式迷你展品和学校活动，以缩小全国服务最匮乏的地区之一的K-12科学教育差距。据预测，这些展品每年将到达阿拉巴马州五个县学区的6.6万名学生手中。脊椎动物宿主中的各种微生物组合，统称为微生物群，对动物健康至关重要。然而，宿主微生物群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被考虑。反复暴露于病原体可能会改变宿主微生物群内的群落动态，并可以促进竞争性微生物相互作用和宿主反应，从而使微生物群富含抗病原体成员。这种获得性病原体抗性的形式被称为微生物组记忆，它可以促进宿主的恢复，并在随后的病原体暴露后使宿主处于启动状态。众所周知，人为生境碎片化限制了宿主在景观尺度上的移动，这可能会改变病原体暴露的速度，这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。该项目将以巴西大西洋森林的两栖动物为模型系统，研究人为栖息地干扰和宿主微生物群动态的相互影响，以此作为解释在支离破碎的地貌中观察到的疾病风险增加的机制。在对三种具有季节性病原体动态的两栖动物物种的调查中，将检查作用于两栖动物皮肤微生物群的选择。此外，还将使用微生物组操纵、宿主易位和无线电遥测进行现场实验，以测试将栖息地碎片化、疾病和宿主微生物组独立于宿主免疫的其他组成部分的机制。这项工作将产生一个强大的数据集，将景观生态学与适应微生物群的元群落理论相结合，对宿主抗病能力以及生物多样性的维持和稳定具有新的影响。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 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.