NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2019: Deciphering the evolutionary dynamics of wild bees in a warming world

Kelemen, Evan Patrick, Tucson AZ

Investigators

Abstract

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2019, Research Using Biological Collections. The fellowship supports research and training of the fellow that will utilize biological collections in innovative ways. The fellow is investigating the environmental causes of recent decreases in animal body size. Across species and the globe, animal body size has decreased suggesting a response to some major environmental change occurring over the past 50-100 years. This research clarifies what environmental factor is driving this decrease in body size by untangling the effects of two common factors known to affect animal body size, temperature and resource abundance. Additionally, while most studies have not considered if species have been responding genetically to climate change, this study sheds light on whether temperature or resource abundance is causing populations to evolve. Uncovering what pressures organisms are responding to and how they are responding is fundamental to our understanding of how organisms react to rapid environmental change and will affect conservation efforts. The fellow is combining museum specimens of the native bee Ceratina calcarata from the past hundred years with climate and land use data to reconstruct how bee populations have responded to environmental change. Since close populations have experienced similar temperature but different land use regimes, a proxy for local resource abundance, the fellow has the opportunity to uncouple the effect of temperature and resource abundance on body size. The fellow is tracking the temporal changes in body size among these populations to see if size correlates with the average yearly temperature or the local resource abundance. The fellow is also using comparative genomics of historical and recent populations to determine if temporal and spatial changes in gene frequencies at areas of the genome identified as being under selection correlate predictably with temperature or resource abundance, indicative of adaptive evolution. The fellow is being trained in molecular genetics and genomic methods, which will expand the fellow's understanding of evolutionary genomics and complement the fellow's background in evolutionary ecology and behavioral ecology. Additionally, the fellow is mentoring graduate and undergraduate students in using biological collections, experimental design, hypothesis testing, and manuscript preparation and publishing, as well as developing inquiry-based science modules in collaboration with local middle schools. 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.