Collaborative Research: IRES Track I: Odonata morphological adaptations to environmental gradients in Ghana: integrating student research in the field, museum, and laboratory

全球气候变化对食物和水的供应、栖息地的供应和基础设施的脆弱性产生了深远的影响，同时威胁着所有生态尺度上的生物多样性。在这个合作的IRES项目中，研究人员将研究蜻蜓在不同气候栖息地的反应和适应，以扩大我们对区域和全球环境变化对生物多样性影响的理解。该项目将招募18名美国学生研究人员，从事对记录和保护生物多样性以及了解在快速环境变化中成功殖民的适应性至关重要的项目。将从传统上代表性不足的群体中招收学生，以建立能力，从而在更广泛的研究界增加包容、公平和创新。此外，来自美国和加纳的学生将由一个多元化的、跨学科的、多机构的和国际团队指导，通过在不同类型的机构和不同的研究背景下接触各种专业知识，获得高度的专业和个人发展。由于气候变化，促进国际合作是全球保护生物多样性的必要步骤，该项目将促进这一努力，因为这项研究是宾夕法尼亚州立大学、美国自然历史博物馆和加纳海岸角大学这三家机构合作开展的。这种合作将使我们能够利用在项目过程中建立的学生和教师的能力，将其扩展到具有类似生态问题的其他国家。西非被认为是世界上最容易受到人为环境变化和随之而来的生物多样性丧失影响的地区之一。然而，关于昆虫物种多样性及其在该地区的分布、快速的环境变化如何影响这些组合以及可能使昆虫适应不断变化的环境的形态适应的信息仍然缺乏。该项目将利用加纳一小块地理范围内自然形成的气候生态区，评估自然和人为环境变化对生物多样性和群落结构的影响。此外，该项目将评估翅膀和神经适应，有助于成功地在不同的栖息地定居，这可能预测昆虫在快速变化的环境中生存和定居。鉴于加纳栖息地的迅速丧失和景观的迅速变化，该项目首次提供了全面的动物区系研究，用于建立数据库、未来监测和保护加纳未登记和代表性不足的齿形动物物种。利用材料科学和神经生物学的方法，该项目还将把形态属性（如光学特性、翅膀的耐久性、蘑菇体）的表型变化与加纳三个生态区的环境因素变化联系起来。这样做将阐明哪些形态特征允许不同栖息地类型的成功殖民。总的来说，这个项目将扩展我们对环境变化对齿鼠分布的影响的认识，以及与环境因素变化相关的形态适应。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。

Global climate change has had profound impacts on food and water availability, habitat availability, and infrastructure vulnerability, while threatening biodiversity across all ecological scales. In this collaborative IRES project, researchers will study the response and adaptation of dragonflies in different climactic habitats, with the goal of broadening our understanding of the effects of regional and global environmental change on biodiversity. The project will recruit 18 U.S. student researchers to work on projects that are critically important to document and preserve biodiversity and understand the adaptations that allow successful colonization during rapid environmental change. Students will be recruited from traditionally underrepresented groups to build capacity, thereby increasing inclusion, equity, and innovation in the broader research community. Further, students from both the U.S. and Ghana will be mentored by a diverse, interdisciplinary, multi-institutional, and international team, gaining a high degree of professional and personal development through exposure to a variety of expertise at different types of institutions and in different research contexts. Fostering international collaborations is a necessary step for worldwide conservation of biodiversity due to climate change, and this program will facilitate such an endeavor, as the research is a collaboration among three institutions, The Pennsylvania State University, the American Museum of Natural History, and the international host institution University of Cape Coast in Ghana. This collaboration will allow us to leverage student and faculty capacities built over the course of the project to extend to other countries that share similar ecological concerns. West Africa is thought to be one of the world’s most vulnerable regions to the effects of anthropogenic environmental change and subsequent loss in biodiversity. However, there remains a paucity of information on insect species biodiversity and their distribution in the region, how rapid environmental change affects those assemblages, and the morphological adaptations that may allow insects to adapt to a changing environment. This project will exploit naturally occurring climate ecozones within a small geographic range in Ghana to assess the effects of environmental change, both natural and anthropogenic, on odonate biodiversity and community structuring. Additionally, the project will assess the wing and neural adaptations that contribute to successful colonization of diverse habitats, which may predict insect survival and colonization in a rapidly changing environment. In view of Ghana’s rapid habitat losses and quickly changing landscape, this project offers the first comprehensive faunal studies for databasing, future monitoring, and conservation of the undocumented and underrepresented odonata species of Ghana. Leveraging methodology from material sciences and neurobiology, this project also will link phenotypic variation in morphological attributes (e.g., optical properties, durability of wings, mushroom bodies) with variation in environmental factors across the three ecozones of Ghana. Doing so will elucidate which morphological characteristics allow successful colonization of different habitat types. Overall, this project will extend our knowledge on the effects of environmental change on odonata distributions, as well as the morphological adaptations that correlate with variation in environmental factors.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.