OPUS: CRS: Integrating organismal biology into the geographic mosaic of coevolution

University Of Virginia Main Campus, Charlottesville VA

Investigators

Abstract

This project studies a predator-prey arms race between toxic newts and the garter snakes that eat them. The coevolutionary dynamics that push arms races such as this one onward are determined by many factors. The coevolutionary dynamics may involve the geographic distributions of the species, the physiological effects of toxins, or the structure of proteins that are used in attack or defense. Synthesizing how these different levels of biological organization interact and dictate arms races will help us better predict outcomes of coevolutionary battles. Understanding what drives one enemy to outpace the other, or eventually win the race, can inform strategies for managing interactions between humans and disease, hosts and parasites, and plants and their herbivore pests. This synthesis of several integrative studies will explore the connections between landscape ecology, microevolution processes, and underlying genetic and protein variation. Previous work on these newts and snakes has amassed thousands of physical specimens with associated phenotypic, genetic, and spatial data spread across multiple labs and collections. The proposed synthesis activities will aggregate these resources into a single relational database. These data will be used in spatially explicit analyses to test predictions about the historical, ecological, and environmental factors that structure geographic mosaics of coevolution. The intersection of organismal mechanisms and evolutionary process will be explored in a single-authored popular science book that follows the pathways to discoveries within the newt-snake system. The book will focus on how natural history observations led to hypotheses, and how tests of those ideas in turn generated new questions to pursue. Additional products include the publicly accessible database, three new papers from spatially explicit analyses, and a series of educational video trailers that introduce evolutionary concepts to high school audiences. 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.