NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2018

Benham Phred M, Missoula MT

Investigators

Abstract

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. Accurately documenting the impacts human activities have on natural populations is a pressing goal in biology. However, in many cases we are limited to studies of present-day populations that exist well after human transformation of the landscape. This presents a major challenge for understanding how different human activities impact populations. Museum collections house long term series of specimens that often span historical, human-induced changes. Recent DNA sequencing advances enable access to genomic data from these specimens, providing an invaluable resource for directly connecting population responses to specific human activities. This project leverages a large series of historic specimens for tidal marsh Savannah Sparrows collected along the California coast over the last 130 years. The fellow will collect morphological and genomic data from these specimens to characterize population responses to salt pond development and urbanization in the San Francisco Bay area. The fellow will develop a sequence capture array to generate genomic material from Savannah Sparrow specimens collected from multiple localities along the California coast and six time points between the 1880s and the present. Morphological data will also be collected from these specimens. These data will be connected with spatial and temporal data on climate and landscape transformation to understand (1) temporal variation in allele frequencies at loci locally adapted to salinity and temperature variation; (2) the impact of tidal marsh habitat loss to changing patterns of population size and gene flow among tidal marsh populations; and (3) the link between changing demography and selective pressures with divergence in adaptive phenotypic traits. The fellow will receive training in extracting and processing degraded DNA from museum specimens, designing sequence capture arrays, and using the bioinformatic pipelines required to process and analyze this data. Data will be linked to specimens in the museum database Arctos, which will then be used to design undergraduate educational modules that highlight the power of museum resources for biological inference. Undergraduate students at UC Berkeley will be recruited to work on this project. Finally, throughout the San Francisco Bay area there is enormous effort currently underway to restore tidal wetlands. The results from this work will inform management strategies about how much habitat is needed to maintain population sizes and population connectivity at historic levels. 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.