NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2018

Homola Jared J, Bradley ME

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. The fellow will conduct research to improve our understanding of the role of rapid evolution in facilitating biological invasions. A longstanding theory in the field predicts that decreased genetic diversity normally associated with small initial populations of invasive species should reduce the likelihood of success for these species. However, invasive species are everywhere across the globe, and result in hundreds of billions of dollars in economic costs each year. The fellow will apply recently developed DNA sequencing techniques to museum specimens of an invasive Great Lakes fish, the round goby, to look for evidence of genetic adaptations associated with this species ability to spread across the Laurentian Great Lakes since 1990. An improved understanding of the evolutionary processes that allow biological invasions to succeed will allow natural resource managers to better anticipate which species pose the greatest risks, increasing the likelihood of successful prevention or mitigation of invasions. The fellow will engage K-12 and undergraduate teaching programs to design active learning classroom lessons focused on biological invasions, which provide an elegant nexus between concepts related to biology, ecology, and evolution. This research project will be completed using a spatially- and temporally-explicit landscape genomics approach that accounts for demographic processes that often make genomic detections of selection difficult. By using genomic data derived from museum specimens collected throughout the Great Lakes region since the invasion began, the project will provide a unique opportunity to empirically observe changes in allele frequencies associated with adaptation to novel environmental stressors. To complement methods seeking genomic signals of selection, the fellow will also evaluate associations between genetic data and a suite of morphological and environmental variables. This project will provide the fellow with training in laboratory and bioinformatic analyses of degraded DNA, including DNA extraction from formalin-preserved samples and sequencing via target capture. The genome-wide panel of loci used in the analyses will provide a resource for future genomic research on round gobies. In addition to creating classroom learning resources, the fellow will also train undergraduate researchers, with an emphasis on underrepresented minorities, in genomic and bioinformatic methods necessary for evolutionary biology research. 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.