RoL: Collaborative Proposal: Integrating responses to environmental change across the biological hierarchy: interactions between behavior, plasticity, and genetic change

由于人类的行动，动物生活的环境正在迅速变化，但在人类出现之前很久，物种也必须应对地球过去快速变化的环境。物种已经适应了更新世期间的突然气候振荡和新的环境，当时它们通过自然扩散事件在新的陆地上定居。因此，适应快速的环境变化是许多物种在其进化史上经历的一个重要现象。然而，科学家们缺乏对使一些物种在环境剧变期间避免灭绝，而另一些物种则灭绝的因素的详细了解。在这一领域没有取得更快进展的一个主要原因是，当生物体的环境开始变化时，它们可以通过几种不同的方式做出反应。其中一些反应，如行为调整，发生在单个生物体的一生中，而另一些反应，如遗传适应，发生在多个世代。关键是，这些反应可以以复杂的方式相互作用，为了真正了解物种如何适应快速的环境变化，我们必须研究这些不同的反应何时以及如何在野外相互作用。该项目利用一项独特的野外实验，直接测量野生动物对其当地环境突然变化的反应。研究人员将把数百只细长的变态蜥蜴从巴拿马大陆的种群移植到巴拿马运河的岛屿上。这些岛屿的环境各不相同。然后，研究人员将实时测量行为、遗传和生理反应，以了解物种如何适应快速的环境变化。这项研究的结果将被用来帮助改进对物种对气候变化等人类驱动现象的反应的预测，并了解为什么一些物种在史前环境变化时期灭绝，而另一些物种持续存在。最后，研究人员将实施他们的行动进化(EIA)计划，其中包括一个在线、现场直播的儿童科学教育节目，来自不同背景的学生科学家将在其中与公众互动。我们目前缺乏一个令人信服的框架来了解和预测种群对其环境快速变化的反应，因为研究1)很少考虑快速环境变化对生物等级(例如，基因、个体、种群)的多个层面的同时影响，2)很少在当代时间尺度上进行，3)当这些过程可能在动态反馈环路中相互作用时，倾向于关注一个适应过程(例如，基因变化)，而不是其他过程(例如，行为)。在这个项目中，研究人员将把Anolis蜥蜴从单一来源的种群转移到巴拿马运河中不同栖息地结构和气候的岛屿。他们将结合一系列不同的实地和实验室研究，以了解行为、可塑性和遗传变化之间的相互作用如何在环境变化时调节种群的持久性。该项目的结果将有助于建立下一代预测模型，用于生物体对人类介导的环境变化的反应，并可能揭示跨代过程(如行为惯性和遗传适应)在快速环境变化期间调节灭绝风险的新规则。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 environments in which animals live are changing rapidly as a result of human actions, but species have also had to deal with rapidly changing environments during Earth’s past, long before humans were on the scene. Species have adapted to abrupt climate oscillations during the Pleistocene and to novel environments when they colonized new land masses via natural dispersal events. Thus, adaptation to rapid environmental change is an important phenomenon that many species have experienced throughout their evolutionary history. Nevertheless, scientists lack a detailed understanding of the factors that allow some species to avoid extinction during environmental upheaval, while others perish. One major reason that faster progress has not been made in this field is that organisms can respond in several distinct ways when their environments begin to change. Some of these responses, like behavioral adjustments, occur within the lifetime of individual organisms, whereas others, like genetic adaptation, occur over multiple generations. Critically, these responses can interact in complex ways, and to truly understand how species adapt to rapid environmental change we must examine when and how these various responses interact in the wild. This project leverages a unique field experiment to directly measure the responses of wild animals to abrupt shifts in their local environments. The researchers will transplant hundreds of slender anole lizards from a population on mainland Panama to islands in the Panama Canal. These islands differ in their environments. The researchers will then measure behavioral, genetic, and physiological responses in real time to understand how species can adapt to rapid environmental change. The results of this study will be used to help improve predictions of the responses of species to human driven phenomena like climate change, and to understand why some species have gone extinct during prehistoric periods of environmental change whereas others persisted. Finally, the researchers will implement their Evolution in Action (EIA) program, which includes an online, live-action children’s science education show where student scientists from diverse backgrounds will interact with the public.We currently lack a compelling framework by which to understand and predict the responses of populations to rapid changes in their environment because studies 1) rarely consider the simultaneous impact of rapid environmental change on multiple levels of the biological hierarchy (e.g. genes, individuals, populations), 2) are infrequently conducted on contemporary time scales, and 3) tend to focus on one adaptive process (e.g. genetic change) to the exclusion of others (e.g. behavior) when these processes are likely to interact in dynamic feedback loops. For this project, researchers will move Anolis lizards from a single source population to islands in the Panama Canal that vary in habitat structure and climate. They will combine a diverse array of field and laboratory studies to understand how interactions between behavior, plasticity, and genetic change mediate population persistence when environments change. The results of this project will lend themselves towards next-generation predictive models for the responses of organisms to human-mediated environmental change and may reveal new rules by which cross-generational processes such as behavioral inertia and genetic accommodation mediate extinction risk during rapid environmental 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.