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

寄生虫的复制速度和造成的危害可能会受到寄主饮食的营养含量的影响。然而，这些影响的大小和方向在不同的宿主和寄生虫之间存在不可预测的差异。这项研究的目标是提高我们预测特定寄生虫将如何应对宿主饮食中营养含量变化的能力。产生这些预测很重要，因为人类活动向许多生态系统添加了氮和磷等营养物质，直接改变了动物饮食的营养成分。这样的饮食转变可能会比其他寄生虫更有利于特定的寄生虫。这项研究将检验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小学研究实验室的主要成员，在他们的助学金结束时进行一项小规模研究，并在第二年向高中同学展示他们的工作。研究人员将通过实验操作无脊椎动物寄主食物中的营养成分，并确定寄主食物、寄主和寄生虫中相对丰富的碳、氮和磷是否有助于预测寄生虫和寄主的结果。为了严格量化微生物寄生虫的营养含量，研究人员采用了一种以前用于量化自由生活微生物的营养含量的能量色散光谱工作流程。对寄主内多个单细胞寄生虫的测量将被用于创建寄生种群在寄主内的营养含量的特征分布。这些特征分布捕捉了寄生虫营养含量在宿主内的变化，这些变化将被用来估计每种寄生虫的营养需求的灵活性，并最终预测每种寄生虫对宿主饮食变化的反应。这一奖项反映了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。

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.