NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2020: The effect of land use change on Caribbean hawkmoth pollination behavior

这一行动资助了NSF 2020财年生物学博士后研究奖学金，使用生物收藏进行研究。该奖学金支持将以创新方式使用生物收藏的研究员的研究和培训。在这个项目中，这位研究员将使用生物采集中的昆虫花粉来评估这些昆虫的授粉行为是如何随着栖息地的丧失而发生变化的。授粉对自然和农业生态系统都是至关重要的，但土地利用的变化会导致传粉者物种的丧失和传粉者行为的改变，从而影响它们向植物授粉的质量。记录传粉者行为的变化对于准确预测未来的变化是必要的，但受到过去推断物种相互作用的困难的限制。这项研究将有助于解决这一困难，因为它是第一次使用历史上收集的飞蛾携带的花粉，也是为数不多的利用历史收集来重建植物-传粉者相互作用的研究之一。为了扩大这项工作的影响，该研究员将指导本科生进行研究，进行与研究相关的公共宣传和课堂演示。作为研究系统，该研究员将调查过去75年来加勒比海地区植物传粉者网络的变化，在此期间，加勒比海地区经历了显著但可变的栖息地丧失。这位研究员将专注于天蛾携带的花粉，这种传粉者是多产的传粉者，比其他传粉者群体积累的偏向花粉量更少，在收藏中得到了很好的代表。作为一个现代的比较，这个家伙还将从牙买加的野生鹰蛾身上收集花粉。这位研究员将通过局部复水鼻子，然后通过DNA元条形码识别花粉载量，非破坏性地从被钉住的鹰蛾标本中移除花粉。这项技术将允许可靠、标准化的鉴定，而不依赖于历史植物群落的花粉参考库。利用这种花粉，这位研究员将检验相互竞争的假设，即鹰蛾要么专门研究它们在形态上匹配的植物，要么随机访问更广泛的花。面对栖息地的丧失，更高的专业化将降低植物传粉者网络的整体弹性，但可能会维持稀有和受威胁的植物。在这个项目中，这位研究员将学习尖端的分子和网络分析技术。项目活动还将允许该研究员在其主办机构和在实地收集期间与牙买加当地科学家进行外联和科学指导机会。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。

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2020, Research Using Biological Collections. The fellowship supports research and training of the fellow that will use biological collections in innovative ways. For this project, the fellow will use pollen taken from insects in biological collections to assess how the pollination behavior of these insects has changed in response to habitat loss. Pollination is critical to both natural and agricultural ecosystems, but land use changes can cause both the loss of pollinator species and changes in pollinator behavior that affect the quality of pollination they provide to plants. Documenting changes in pollinator behavior is necessary to accurately predict changes in the future but is limited by the difficulty of inferring species interactions in the past. This research will help resolve this difficulty by being the first use of pollen carried by historically collected moths, and one of very few studies to use historical collections to reconstruct plant-pollinator interactions. To broaden the impact of the work, the fellow will mentor undergraduate students in research, conduct public outreach and classroom demonstrations related to the research.As the study system, the fellow will investigate plant-pollinator network change over the past 75 years in the Caribbean, which has experienced significant but variable habitat loss over this time period. The fellow will focus on the pollens carried by hawkmoths (Lepidoptera: Sphingidae), which are prolific pollinators that accumulate less biased pollen loads than other pollinator groups and are well represented in collections. As a modern comparison, the fellow will also collect pollen loads from wild hawkmoths in Jamaica. The fellow will non-destructively remove the pollen from pinned hawkmoth specimens by locally rehydrating proboscises, then identifying the pollen loads via DNA meta-barcoding. This technique will allow for reliable, standardized identifications that do not rely on pollen reference libraries from historical plant communities. Using this pollen, the fellow will test the competing hypotheses that hawkmoths will either specialize on plants they match morphologically or opportunistically visit a wider range of flowers. In the face of habitat loss, higher specialization will reduce the overall resilience of plant-pollinator networks but will likely maintain rare and threatened plants. During this project, the fellow will learn cutting-edge molecular and network-analysis techniques. The project activities will also allow the fellow to engage in outreach and scientific mentoring opportunities both at their host institution and with local scientists in Jamaica during field collection.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.