NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2016

Nielsen Matthew E, Chapel Hill NC

Investigators

Abstract

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2016, Research Using Biological Collections. The fellowship supports a research and training plan for the Fellow to take transformative approaches to grand challenges in biology that employ biological collections in highly innovative ways. The title of the research plan for this fellowship to Matthew Nielsen is "Evolution of seasonal color plasticity in response to climate change in orange sulphur butterflies." The host institution for this fellowship is the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and the sponsoring scientist is Dr. Joel Kingsolver. The goal of this research is to investigate how climate change affects adaptive phenotypic plasticity, the ability of an organism to change its traits to better fit its environment. Adaptive plasticity relies on the ability of an organism to use cues to predict the future environment. Climate change can disrupt this relationship so that formerly functional cues no longer reliably predict the environment an organism will experience. The Fellow is investigating this in the orange sulphur butterfly (Colias eurytheme), which as a caterpillar uses seasonal changes in photoperiod to determine whether to produce a warm or cool season form as an adult. Because climate change alters temperatures, but not photoperiod, it has likely disrupted the ability for this butterfly (as well as other organisms) to predict the environment it will experience; however, evolutionary change could 'correct' this mismatch by altering the photoperiods when the two morphs are produced. The Fellow is examining this evolutionary process by examining changes in the time of year when each form is found across the last 60 years using specimens from natural history collections across different parts of the US, including the Smithsonian, the California Academy of Sciences, the Field Museum, the Milwaukee Public Museum, the McGuire Collection at University of Florida-Gainesville, and Yale's Peabody Museum. The Fellow's research promotes understanding of how phenotypic plasticity evolves when the relationship between a cue and the environment it predicts changes. Further, it provides an important insight into the limitations of thermoregulatory plasticity in responding to climate change and whether evolution can overcome those limitations. The Fellow is receiving advanced training in a variety of topics, including hands-on work with collections, spatially explicit statistics, and biophysical modeling. This project is allowing the Fellow to establish lasting collaborations with other biologists using collections. The Fellow is training undergraduates in topics such as experimental design, collection use, and data analysis, and involving the broader public through a citizen science component using online tools to help collect observations and survey the contemporary timing of the orange sulphur?s seasonal morphs. To further connect to the public, the Fellow is sharing his research resultsat multiple local science festivals, focusing on how it fits into the broader picture of climate change.