NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2021: Using metacommunity theory to assess the impact of multi-species interactions on gut microbial assembly

该行动资助了2021财年的NSF生物学博士后研究奖学金，即调查基因组，环境和表型之间相互作用的生命规则的综合研究。该研究金支持研究员的研究和培训，以创新的方式为生活规则领域做出贡献。该项目旨在了解动物在社区内的联系方式，以及联系如何帮助动物即使在压力条件下也保持健康。动物肠道内的细菌群落，或宿主相关的肠道微生物组，提供了一个独特的系统来测试这些想法：肠道微生物组提供了许多重要的功能（消化食物，产生维生素和训练免疫系统），但也会响应动物的环境，社会互动和饮食而迅速变化。为了平衡自然微生物共享过程和实验操作，研究员将创建一个由三种青蛙组成的模型水生系统，这些青蛙在其野生栖息地中自然重叠。通过改变青蛙的社会和环境条件，并研究它们的肠道微生物组如何变化，研究员将能够解开一种可以缓冲动物对抗环境压力的社区连接机制。此外，在这项研究中使用两栖动物具有重要的保护意义：两栖动物通常被用作生态系统健康的指标，但由于栖息地退化和疾病流行率增加，全球范围内两栖动物数量正在下降。了解管理两栖动物健康的机制，提供了重要的环境管理决策的风险物种。在整个项目中，研究员将指导来自历史上代表性不足的群体的学生，以及与现有的机构部门合作，创建K-12教学模块，用于当地公立学校。这项研究测试肠道微生物的转移，特别是在宿主个体和物种之间，是否主要由代谢过程驱动。具体而言，生态过程，如宿主或环境之间的扩散已被证明是微生物组组装的重要驱动因素，限制扩散可以显着改变群落组成。在多物种背景下，该项目可以将微生物组研究中社区生态理论的传统应用扩展到元生态性方法，将单个宿主和宿主物种视为“斑块”，并跟踪斑块内或斑块之间的生态和进化过程（扩散，选择，优先效应）。通过创建一个易于处理的水生系统来比较这些生态进化过程的相对重要性，研究员将把代谢模型提出的假设应用于微生物组，从而确定肠道微生物组装的因果驱动因素。通过该项目，该研究员将接受动物生理学、实验生物学、生态学和基因组学领域的培训，并通过创建以有益微生物和两栖动物保护为重点的K-12教学模块，进行STEM教育。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值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 2021, Integrative Research Investigating the Rules of Life Governing Interactions Between Genomes, Environment and Phenotypes. The fellowship supports research and training of the Fellow that will contribute to the area of Rules of Life in innovative ways. This project aims to understand the ways in which animals are connected within a community and how connectivity may help animals remain healthier even under stressful conditions. The community of bacteria within an animal’s gut, or host-associated gut microbiome, provides a unique system in which to test these ideas: the gut microbiome provides a number of important functions (digests food, produces vitamins, and trains the immune system) but also changes rapidly in response to an animal’s environment, social interactions, and diet. In order to balance natural microbial sharing processes and experimental manipulation, the Fellow will create a model aquatic system consisting of three species of frogs that naturally overlap in their wild habitat. By altering the frogs’ social and environmental conditions and examining how their gut microbiomes change, the Fellow will be able to disentangle one mechanism of community connectivity that could buffer animals against environmental stress. In addition, the use of amphibians in this research has important conservation implications: amphibians are often used as an indicator of ecosystem health, but are declining globally due to habitat degradation and increased disease prevalence. Understanding the mechanisms that govern amphibian health provides important context for management decisions of at-risk species. Throughout this project, the Fellow will mentor students from historically underrepresented groups, as well as work with existing institutional departments to create K-12 teaching module(s) for use in local public schools.This research tests whether the transfer of gut microbes, especially across host individuals and species, could be primarily driven by metacommunity processes. Specifically, ecological processes such as dispersal between hosts or environments have been shown to be important drivers of microbiome assembly, and limiting dispersal can significantly alter community composition. In a multi-species context, this project can extend the traditional use of community ecological theory in microbiome research to a metacommunity approach, treating individual hosts and host species as “patches” and tracking ecological and evolutionary processes (dispersal, selection, priority effects) within or between patches. By creating a tractable aquatic system in which to compare the relative importance of these eco-evolutionary processes, the Fellow will apply hypotheses proposed by metacommunity models to the microbiome and thus identify causal drivers of gut microbial assembly. Through this project, the Fellow will receive training in the fields of animal physiology, experimental biology, ecology, and genomics, as well as STEM education through the creation of K-12 teaching module(s) focused on beneficial microbes and amphibian conservation.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.