NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2020:Courting death or reproductive success? Analysis of interactions underlying rapid evolutionary change in crickets

Zonana, David Michael, Denver CO

Investigators

Abstract

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2020, Integrative Research Investigating the Rules of Life Governing Interactions Between Genomes, Environment and Phenotypes. The fellowship supports research and training of the fellow that will contribute to the area of Rules of Life in innovative ways. Living organisms constantly navigate a web of interactions with mates, competitors, and enemies. Over lifetimes, the outcomes of these diverse interactions shape an individual’s likelihood of survival and reproduction. However, strategies that are successful in one type of interaction may be catastrophic in other contexts. For instance, producing a flashy courtship display may gain the attention of potential mates, but can also alert nearby predators and parasites to their next meal. Understanding how such tradeoffs shape the evolution of traits and behaviors will improve the ability to predict how organisms will respond to a rapidly changing world. This project will capitalize on the rapid and ongoing evolution of acoustic courtship songs in the Pacific field cricket (Teleogryllus oceanicus) to test how key characteristics evolve in concert with changes to mating behaviors and ecological interactions with natural enemies. To increase the impact, this project will engage K-16 students to increase participation in the sciences through close one-on-one mentoring, an immersive course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE), and the generation of open-source online evolution teaching materials. The fellow will combine three empirical approaches to investigate how evolutionary fitness emerges through both fine-scale social interactions between Pacific field crickets and their ecological interactions with a fatally parasitic fly, Ormia ochracea, that hunts by listening for singing male crickets. Using leading-edge molecular techniques, the fellow will first identify regions of the genome that underlie variation in cricket wing morphology that produces courtship song—a phenotype involved in both mating and susceptibility to parasitism. Second, the fellow will generate social networks using video-based tracking methods to characterize mating behaviors used by crickets with different wing morphologies and signals, and to estimate the strength of mate selection operating under various social contexts. Finally, the fellow will conduct field-based selection experiments in the Hawaiian Islands that manipulate the composition and exposure to parasitism of cricket populations—while quantifying survival and natural mating patterns—¬in order to estimate the relative effects of natural and mate selection on fitness and trait evolution. The fellow will receive training from experts in experimental approaches with whole organisms, field-based studies, and evolutionary genomics at both the University of Denver, and the University of St. Andrews (UK). The fellow will also develop effective science curriculum and will lead immersive research-based educational experiences at a Hawaiian undergraduate institution with a diverse student body. 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.