NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2017: Visual Adaptation to Nocturnality in Birds

White Noor, Bowie MD

Investigators

Abstract

This is an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology, under the program Research Using Biological Collections. The fellow, Noor White, is conducting research and receiving training that utilizes biological collections in innovative ways, and is being mentored by two sponsoring scientists at two host institutions: Anand Swaroop (National Eye Institute, National Institutes of Health) and Belinda Chang (University of Toronto). Looking at the ways in which animals have adapted to novel or changing environments is key to understanding the world around us. This research investigates a particularly striking transition that some birds have undertaken the shift from a day-living (or diurnal) to a night-living (or nocturnal) environment. Being relatively rare in number, nocturnal birds have an advantage over diurnal birds in that there is less competition for food and fewer predators present at night than during the day. That advantage comes with challenges, however, and in particular the challenge of how to see in low-light environments. By asking what changes are present in the genes and proteins necessary for vision between diurnal and nocturnal birds, this project will uncover how birds have developed night vision, and adapted to a new environment. The genes and proteins involved in vision are conserved across vertebrates, and therefore the results of this project will be relevant to other animal groups, including humans. The data uncovered here will help society understand how vision works, and will be applicable and relevant to research on human vision and visual diseases, such as colorblindness. This research will generate genomic and protein (through retinal transcriptome sequencing) sequences of visual genes from both nocturnal and diurnal birds with all lineages of nocturnal birds represented. The functional significance of molecular adaptations will be identified by expression of opsin proteins and direct measurement of their spectral sensitivity. The fellow hypothesizes that the transitions to nocturnality across the avian tree of life were independent, and thus novel mechanisms of adaptation will be found coincident with each major transition. This project relies on collections housed at major museums across the country, taking advantage of the work of previous scientists to carefully collect and curate birds from around the world. The fellow has a long history of public outreach and is committed to sharing her work with the public at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. Results from these studies will be published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at scientific meetings.