Collaborative Research: BoCP-Design: US-China: Functional divergence between females and males: consequences of climate-induced shifts in composition of dioecious plant population

大多数动物和许多植物都有单独的生理性别：个体可以是雌性也可以是雄性。除了不同的体型外，雌性和雄性在生态上也常常不同。它们可能有不同的饮食需求，对捕食者的脆弱性不同，或者对气候压力的反应不同。随着地球气候的迅速变化，科学家预测雌性和雄性的应对能力会有所不同，这可能会导致一种性别过多而另一种性别不足。在这个项目中，研究小组将测试气候变化如何影响优势乔灌木的性别比例，以及性别比例的变化是否会影响群落的生物多样性和生态系统的营养循环。该项目将美国和中国的科学家聚集在一起，比较北美和亚洲对气候变化的反应是否相似。许多重要的食物和景观植物都有不同的性别（例如菠菜、开心果、冬青和柳树），因此这项研究将帮助科学家预测这些和类似的植物物种将如何应对未来的气候变化。此外，学生将通过分布在五所大学的研究生研讨会，以及本科生和高中生的研究经验来接受培训。性别的功能差异增加了气候变化通过对女性和男性的不同影响来扰乱人口性别比的可能性。人们对性别比例变化对人口、社区和生态系统的影响知之甚少。这一两国团队将为理解和预测全球气候变化下性别比例变化的方向和幅度奠定基础，并测试气候引起的性别比例变化对人口生存能力、宿主相关生物多样性和生态系统功能的级联效应。该团队将在中国四川省和美国德克萨斯州开发一个木本雌雄异株植物的比较系统。像许多雌雄异株植物一样，这些栖息地形成的木本物种支持多种影响生态系统水平碳和氮通量的微观和宏观生物群。该设计项目将汇集美国和中国研讨会的研究团队，共同开发气候变化对性别比例敏感性的生态后果的理论，并开发测试其预测所需的方法和建模方法。该项目将支持开发分子标记来识别非开花个体的性别，DNA条形码技术来表征寄主相关群落，以及性别特异性土壤碳和氮动态分析。雌雄异株是最常见的人口结构形式之一，气候变化预计会改变男女比例。这个项目是第一个评估性别的功能差异和气候引起的性别比例变化如何导致跨组织尺度的级联效应的项目之一。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。

Most animals and many plants have separate biological sexes: individuals can be either female or male. In addition to their distinct body plans, females and males often differ ecologically. They may have different dietary needs, different vulnerability to predators, or different responses to climate stress. As the Earth’s climate rapidly changes, scientists predict that females and males will differ in their ability to cope, and this may cause an over-abundance of one sex and a shortage of the other. In this project, the research team will test how climate change will affect the sex ratio of dominant trees and shrubs, and whether changes in sex ratio can influence biodiversity of the community and nutrient cycling through the ecosystem. The project brings together American and Chinese scientists to compare whether these responses to climate change play out similarly in North America and Asia. Many important food and landscaping plants have separate sexes (spinach, pistachio, holly, and willow, for example), so this research will help scientists predict how these and similar plant species will respond to future climate change. In addition, students will be trained via a distributed, five-institution graduate seminar, as well as research experiences for undergraduate and high school students. Functional divergence of the sexes raises the potential for climate change to perturb population sex ratios through contrasting effects on females and males. Little is known about the consequences of sex ratio shifts for populations, communities, and ecosystems. The binational team will develop the foundations needed to understand and forecast the direction and magnitude of changes in sex ratio under global climate change, and to test the cascading effects of climate-induced sex ratio shifts on population viability, host-associated biodiversity, and ecosystem function. The team will develop a comparative system of woody dioecious plants in Sichuan Province, China and Texas, US. Like many dioecious plants, these habitat-forming woody species support diverse micro- and macro-biota that affect ecosystem-level fluxes of carbon and nitrogen. This Design project will bring together the research team for workshops in the US and China to develop theory for the ecological consequences of sex ratio sensitivity to climate change, and to develop the methods and modeling approaches required to test its predictions. The project will support development of molecular markers to identify the sex of non-flowering individuals, DNA barcoding technologies to characterize host-associated communities, and assays of sex-specific soil carbon and nitrogen dynamics. Dioecy is among the most common forms of demographic structure and climate change is expected to alter female:male sex ratios. This project is among the first to evaluate how functional divergence of the sexes and climate-induced changes in sex ratio lead to cascading effects across scales of organization.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.