Collaborative Research: STEPP-NET: Steppe Parasite Networks

本项目主要收集和描述中亚草原哺乳动物及其绦虫和跳蚤寄生虫。这些寄生虫具有高度多样性和重要的生态类群，许多是生态系统质量的敏感指标；此外，它们引起的寄生虫感染可能对野生动物产生重大负面影响。它们还可以在将疾病从野生物种传播给驯化物种以及传播给人类方面发挥重要作用。然而，对于寄生虫种类的多样性、它们的地理分布以及它们所寄生的确切宿主，世界上许多地方的知识仍然非常零碎。中亚哺乳动物及其相关寄生虫尤其濒危，但研究却很少。该项目将收集新材料，研究该地区的绦虫和跳蚤寄生虫如何与其哺乳动物宿主一起进化；它还将考虑寄主和寄生虫如何对整个地区的各种生态变化作出反应。这项工作具有极高的时效性，随着该地区经济的转变和重大建设的发生，许多中亚生态系统正处于重大土地利用变化的边缘。将收集大量标本，这些标本将作为寄生虫多样性的储存库，有助于评估未来全球变化如何影响寄生虫及其宿主的分布。这可能最终改善公共卫生结果。这项工作还将包括培训下一代早期职业STEM研究人员从事生物多样性科学的职业。step - net项目将在中亚广阔的草原上迅速推进两种与哺乳动物相关的大型寄生虫分支——跳蚤和壳虫——的物种多样性、宿主关联和群落聚集的发现和描述。该地区是探索宿主-寄生虫动态和对人类活动的溢出反应的原型；从历史上看，它是古代丝绸之路贸易路线的通道，而从目前来看，它是土地利用变化和建设加剧的原因。STEPP-NET利用现有的博物馆标本、蒙古和哈萨克斯坦的新探险收藏品以及宿主和寄生虫的基因组分析来推进物种边界、环境和宿主生态位宽度的知识，并通过局灶寄生虫进化支探索应对全球变化压力的新宿主界面。step - net的一个关键成果将是扩大中亚标本网络，其中哺乳动物和寄生虫标本与衍生数据持久地联系在一起，并可立即用于全球生物多样性研究和公共卫生倡议。该项目还为STEM研究生和本科生创造了参与现代生物多样性科学的机会，从国际实地考察到标本管理和数字化，基因组学和综合分类学。它将通过开发本科和研究生教育模块，进一步建立这个早期职业STEM研究人员社区，这些模块在我们的机构中实施，并在线托管，以促进更广泛的生物多样性素养。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识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 project focuses on collecting and describing mammals and their tapeworm and flea parasites from the grasslands of Central Asia. These parasites are highly diverse and ecologically important groups, and many are sensitive indicators of ecosystem quality; further, the parasitic infections they cause can have major negative impacts on wildlife. They also can play an important role in transmitting diseases from wild to domesticated species, and also to humans. However, knowledge of the diversity of parasite species, their geographic distributions, and the precise hosts they occur on and in remains highly fragmentary for much of the world. Central Asian mammals and their associated parasites are particularly highly imperiled but also little studied. This project will collect new material and study how tapeworm and flea parasites from the region evolve in conjunction with their mammalian hosts; it will also consider how the hosts and parasites have responded to various ecological changes across the region. This work is extremely time-sensitive, with many Central Asian ecosystems on the cusp of major land use change as economies shift and major construction occurs in the region. Numerous specimens will be collected, and these will serve as a repository of parasite diversity useful for assessing how future global change influences the distribution of parasites and their hosts. This may ultimately improve public health outcomes. The work will also involve training the next generation of early-career STEM researchers for careers in biodiversity science. The STEPP-NET project will rapidly advance discovery and description of species diversity, host associations, and community assembly, in two mammal-associated macroparasite clades - fleas and cestodes - across the vast grasslands of Central Asia. This region is a prototype for exploring host-parasite dynamics and spillover in response to human activity; historically, as a conduit for ancient Silk Road trade routes, and, currently, from intensifying land use changes and construction. STEPP-NET leverages existing museum specimens, new expeditionary collections in Mongolia and Kazakhstan, and genomic analyses of hosts and parasites to advance knowledge of species boundaries, environmental and host niche breadth, and the exploration of novel host interfaces by focal parasite clades in response to global change pressures. A key outcome of STEPP-NET will be an extended specimen network for Central Asia, in which mammal and parasite specimens are durably linked to derived data and immediately useful in global biodiversity studies and public health initiatives. The project also creates opportunities for STEM graduate and undergraduate students to participate across the spectrum of modern biodiversity science, from international fieldwork to specimen curation and digitization, genomics, and integrative taxonomy. It will build out this community of early-career STEM researchers even further by developing undergraduate and graduate educational modules that are implemented across our institutions and hosted online for broader biodiversity literacy.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.