Collaborative Research: EAGER: Infrapopulation trait distributions link nutrient availability to host-parasite dynamics

寄生虫的复制速率和造成的危害会受到宿主饮食的营养成分的影响。然而，这些影响的大小和方向在不同的宿主和寄生虫中是不可预测的。这项研究的目的是提高我们预测特定寄生虫对宿主饮食营养成分变化的反应能力。做出这些预测很重要，因为人类活动给许多生态系统增加了氮和磷等营养物质，直接改变了动物饮食中的营养成分。这样的饮食变化可能对特定的寄生虫更有利。这项研究将验证寄主饮食对寄生虫复制率的影响是由寄生虫自身营养需求的灵活性决定的假设。该项目还将改善当地一所高中学生的科学教育成果。两名高中生将在一个夏天成为初级研究实验室不可或缺的成员，在助教任期结束时进行一项小型研究，并在第二年向其他高中生展示他们的研究成果。研究人员将通过实验来控制无脊椎动物宿主饮食中的营养成分，并确定宿主饮食、宿主和寄生虫中碳、氮和磷的相对丰度是否有助于预测寄生虫和宿主的结果。为了严格量化微生物寄生虫的营养成分，研究人员采用了以前用于量化自由生活微生物营养成分的能量色散光谱工作流程。对宿主内多个单细胞寄生虫的测量将用于创建宿主内寄生种群营养成分的性状分布。这些性状分布捕捉了寄主内寄生虫营养含量的变化，这将用于估计每种寄生虫营养需求的灵活性，并最终预测每种寄生虫对寄主饮食变化的反应。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。

The replication rate and harm caused by a parasite can be affected by the nutritional content of its host’s diet. However, the magnitude and direction of these effects vary unpredictably among different hosts and parasites. The goal of this research is to improve our ability to predict how specific parasites will respond to shifts in the nutrient content of their host’s diets. Generating these predictions is important because human activities add nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus to many ecosystems, directly altering the nutrient content of the diet of animals. Such dietary shifts could favor specific parasites over others. This research will test the hypothesis that the effect of host diet on parasite replication rate is dictated by the flexibility of a parasite’s own nutritional requirements. This project will also improve science education outcomes for students at a local high school. Two high school students will become integral members of the primary research lab for a summer, conducting a small study at the end of their assistantship, and presenting their work to fellow high school students the following year.The researchers will experimentally manipulate the nutrient content of the diet of an invertebrate host and determine if the relative abundance of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus in host diets, hosts, and parasites can help predict outcomes for the parasite and host. To rigorously quantify the nutrient content of microbial parasites, the researchers have adapted an energy dispersive spectroscopy workflow previously used to quantify the nutrient content of free-living microbes. Measurements of multiple single celled parasites within a host will be used to create trait distributions of the nutrient content of parasitic populations within a host. These trait distributions capture within-host variation in parasite nutrient content which will be used to estimate the flexibility of each parasite’s nutritional requirements, and, ultimately, to predict the response of each parasite to shifts in the host’s diet.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.