NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2021: Effects of individual experience on population social structure: integrating development, gene expression and social ecology

Zipple, Matthew, Hillsborough NC

Investigators

Abstract

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2021, 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. All societies are made up of individuals and their complex set of characteristics and interactions. At the same time, individuals’ health and behavior in adulthood are shaped by the social and physical experiences of early life. Yet, it remains unclear how these early life experiences shape higher level social structure. The fellow will use semi-natural populations of mice to fill this gap by studying how variation in individuals’ previous experiences and resulting behavior in adulthood collectively shape the structure of the larger society in which they live. In addition to the research outcomes from this work, the fellow will continue to develop two projects that improve and expand the dissemination of research in the areas of animal behavior, life history, and evolution. The first project is the Long-Term Animal Research seminar series, an innovative virtual seminar series with a global audience (>10000 views on YouTube in the last 12 months). The second project is the Animal Behavior Podcast, which the fellow is currently developing with the support of the Animal Behavior Society (coming June 21, 2021). Each episode features conversations with leading researchers in the field of animal behavior, combining discussions of research with professional development, personal experiences, and history of the field. The fellow will leverage a populations of semi-wild mice to understand the links between individuals’ experience and phenotype, how that phenotype shapes social structure, and ultimately how society influences the individual. First, the fellow will measure the impacts of early life social isolation on individuals’ growth, social behavior, and transcriptome. Second, the fellow will generate populations of semi-wild mice, made up of individuals that experienced social isolation or social connection in early life. The fellow will then use social network analyses to understand the ways in which population-level social structures differ, depending on the early experiences of individuals in the population. Finally, the fellow will use molecular approaches to understand the extent to which the epigenetic consequences of early social experience are transmitted across generations. This research will provide insight into the complex relationships between individual experience, phenotype, and larger social structures in a single study system. 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.