Minority Postdoctoral Research Fellowship for FY 2002

Fedorka, Kenneth M, Columbia SC

Investigators

Abstract

This action funds an NSF Minority Postdoctoral Research Fellowship for FY2002. The goal of the fellowship is to prepare minority scientists for positions of scientific leadership in academia and industry. To attain this goal, the fellowship provides opportunities for postdoctoral training of the highest quality to recent doctoral recipients. This program is an effort by the NSF to increase the number of research scientists from underrepresented minority groups, thereby contributing to the future vitality of the Nation's scientific enterprise. It is expected that Fellows trained through these fellowships will play important roles in training of the future workforce. The research and training plan for this fellowship is entitled "Role of antagonistic coevolution in the rate of male accessory gland protein divergence." Within a mating system, males and females often have divergent reproductive strategies, creating an antagonistic coevolutionary relationship between the sexes. The objective of this research is to investigate the covariance between sexual conflict intensity and the expression of sexually selected traits, life history traits and the rate of protein divergence in closely related Drosophila species.