This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2018, Research Using Biological Collections. The fellowship supports research and training of the fellow that will utilize biological collections in innovative ways. The fellow will head a collaborative team at the University of Minnesota to investigate how ecologically important species of zooplankton 'Daphnia pulicaria' respond to rapid, human-induced changes to the environment. Given the rapid pace of contemporary environmental change, understanding how populations adjust to novel conditions and variability within the environment is a top concern in ecology and evolution. The fellow will utilize a unique characteristic of Daphnia that allows them to be resurrected from resting egg sacs contained in layers of sediment at the bottom of lakes. Daphnia eggs that are up to 700 years old can be resurrected and aspects of their biology measured to reconstruct the last 700 years of evolution in this keystone species. This research will inform our understanding of how human activities affect patterns of evolution in wild animal populations.
The fellow will utilize biological collections contained in sediment cores collected throughout the state of Minnesota from both highly human-disturbed regions and more pristine regions to resurrect Daphnia from diapausing eggs trapped in sediment layers. Daphnia from up to 700 years old will then be raised to adulthood in conditions that emulate both historic and contemporary nutritional states of local water bodies. The degree of phenotypic plasticity in resurrected Daphnia metabolism and nutrient processing will be assessed through both genomic and transcriptomic tools, documenting both how evolutionary patterns are affected by nutritional plasticity and how nutritional plasticity, itself, evolves. The fellow will work with an integrative and cross-disciplinary team of researchers to enhance their training in these cutting-edge methods. Concurrent with this research, the fellow will also be developing hands-on research modules suitable 6th-12th grade students directed at using Daphnia and other freshwater invertebrates to teach evolution in response to human-induced environmental change.
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.
