BRC-BIO: Success in the Anthropocene: Evolutionary Ecology of the Common Wall Lizard in Ohio

地球气候和生态系统的巨大变化给许多生物带来了挑战，但一些物种显然在这些新环境中茁壮成长。一个例子是共同墙蜥蜴，这是一种小型的活跃蜥蜴物种，原产于欧洲大陆，但最近在英国、加拿大和美国定居。这里描述的研究项目试图找出这种物种在引入如此少的动物后，在新大陆上的新奇城市环境中蓬勃发展的原因。具体地说，这项研究将利用实地观察和实验室实验，包括行为、生理和身体尺寸的测量来描述对新气候和改变的物理栖息地结构的反应。此外，这项研究将利用新的进展来识别与这些特定特征相关的基因，以及自引入蜥蜴以来，这些特征如何帮助蜥蜴在整个地区扩张。然后，这些信息可用于管理工作，以防止潜在有害入侵物种的传播，或了解我们想要保护的生物可能如何对其环境变化做出反应。这里建立的基础设施和系统将为本科生建立一个长期、可持续的研究计划的基础，该计划将成为其他机构的榜样，特别关注在STEM领域为代表不足的少数民族增加参与和取得成功。该研究计划将提供对生态背景和进化过程的综合理解，这些环境和进化过程塑造了脊椎动物外温类动物--普通壁蜥蜴(Podarcis Muraris)--在新环境中的成功建立。这项研究将通过(1)量化温度调节行为和温度依赖特征，以评估可塑性和适应在城市景观中茁壮成长的能力的相对影响；(2)识别与生态相关的环境中的形态-表现关系，以测试形态在时间和空间上的变化，然后评估这些变化是否有助于入侵成功并预测未来的扩张，从而深入了解复杂的生物表型是如何被进化过程塑造的，以及它们如何对新的生态环境做出反应。以及(3)利用全基因组重测序来测试有关成立事件对基因组水平上的功能和中性变异水平的影响以及这如何影响关键进化过程的假设。这项工作利用了最近的技术进步，并将验证为未来研究提供资源的新方法，包括使用红外热像仪、微型传感器温度变送器、运动建模的新应用以及基因组测序技术和分析管道。这一整体方法促进了我们对生物体如何与新环境相互作用的理解，并为描述有助于在新的或变化的环境中取得成功的表型和基因组特征提供了概念基础。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。

Large changes to our planet’s climate and ecosystems have presented challenges to many organisms, yet some species are apparently thriving in these new environments. One example is the Common Wall Lizard, a small, active lizard species native to mainland Europe but recently established in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the US. The research project described here seeks to identify the reasons that this species has flourished in novel urban environments on a new continent after an introduction of so few animals. Specifically, this research will leverage field observations and lab experiments including measures of behavior, physiology, and body dimensions to describe responses to new climates and altered physical habitat structure. Additionally, the research will employ new advances to identify genes related to these specific traits and how these traits have helped lizards expand across the landscape since their introduction. This information can then be leveraged in management efforts to prevent the spread of potentially harmful invasive species or to understand how organisms we want to protect may respond to changes in their environment. The infrastructure and systems established here will form the foundation of a long-term, sustainable research program for undergraduate students that will be a model for other institutions, with a specific focus on increased participation and success in STEM fields for underrepresented minorities.This research program will provide an integrative understanding of the ecological context and evolutionary processes that shape the successful establishment of a vertebrate ectotherm, the Common Wall Lizard (Podarcis muralis), in a novel environment. The research will provide insight into how complex organismal phenotypes are shaped by evolutionary processes and how they respond to new ecological situations by (1) quantifying thermoregulatory behaviors and thermally-dependent traits to assess the relative influence of plasticity and adaptation in the ability of P. muralis to thrive in urban landscapes; (2) identifying morphology-performance relationships in ecologically-relevant contexts to test for morphological shifts in time and space and then assess whether these shifts contribute to invasion success and can predict future expansion; and (3) utilizing whole-genome resequencing to test hypotheses regarding the impact of the founding event on functional and neutral levels of variation at the genomic level and how this has impacted key evolutionary processes. This work leverages recent technological advances and will validate new approaches to provide resources for future studies, including the use of infrared thermography, microsensor temperature transmitters, novel application of movement modelling, and genomic sequencing technologies and analysis pipelines. This holistic approach advances our understanding of how organisms interact with novel environments and provides a conceptual basis for characterizing the phenotypic and genomic qualities that facilitate success in new or changing environments.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.