NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2018

Shah Alisha A, Fort Collins CO

Investigators

Abstract

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2018, Broadening Participation of Groups Under-represented in Biology. The fellowship supports a research and training plan for the Fellow that will increase the participation of groups underrepresented in biology. Understanding the environmental factors that allow species to survive in various environments is an important goal of ecologists. Knowledge gained from such work can be used to explain patterns of biodiversity, predict how species will respond to changing environments, and enable society to make informed decisions about conservation and management. Temperature is a prevalent factor that determines aspects of life for ectotherms, i.e., animals that cannot produce their own body heat. For example, an insect living underneath a leaf in a shady tree may experience temperatures that are much cooler compared to the surrounding air. How does this "micro-scale" temperature change from leaf to leaf? How does it affect the growth and survival of the insect? How does it affect the interactions between the insect and others? These questions will be answered using leaf miners, small moths that live inside aspen leaves, and their wasp predators. Answering these questions requires a large team effort, making such a project ideal for teaching scientific methods to students. The Fellow will use this opportunity to teach undergraduates from underrepresented communities, especially Native American students, how to conduct a scientific experiment, collect data, and interpret and share results. To understand the thermal environment of leaf miners, the Fellow and her team will first collect temperature data using thermocouples from several hundred leaves located in various parts of aspen trees. Then, to record which temperatures are optimal for miners, the Fellow and her team will construct thermal performance curves using growth rate. Finally, the team will investigate how interactions between wasps and miners are altered by experimentally manipulating temperature in an experimental arena. The experiments are designed to test multiple hypotheses about how leaf temperature affects leaf miners and how it might alter predator-prey interactions. The Fellow will also teach Native middle school children how to use basic biological monitoring techniques with insects to assess the health of streams around the Flathead Indian Reservation. 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.