NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology: The Microbiome as a Facilitator of Adaptive Plasticity under Rapid Environmental Change

Fontaine, Samantha S, Pittsburgh PA

Investigators

Abstract

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2022, 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. Given the threat of global climate change, it is important to understand how animals respond and evolve when faced with rapid changes in their environments. Phenotypic plasticity, which occurs when an individual adjusts its physiology in response to environmental conditions, can help animals deal with increasing temperatures. When animals face a high degree or variable amount of environmental change, they may evolve an increased capability for plasticity. Further, microbial communities (bacteria, fungi, etc.) that live in animal gastrointestinal tracts can influence animal physiology and could impact their host’s ability to respond to changing environments. In this project, the Fellow will monitor evolution in heat tolerance plasticity of anole lizards after recent and rapid increases to the temperature of their environment. Additionally, the Fellow will determine if microbial communities in the gut have facilitated aspects of this adaptation. This research will help elucidate how interactions between hosts and microbes shape organismal responses to changing climates, which may help protect vulnerable species. The Fellow will also work to disseminate scientific findings to the public while mentoring undergraduate students from backgrounds underrepresented in STEM disciplines on independent research projects. This project will leverage an ongoing field evolution experiment in which Panamanian slender anole lizards have been transplanted from cool, mainland environments, to island environments which are often significantly warmer than the mainland, ancestral population. In this system, the Fellow will determine whether lizards in the warmest and most thermally variable island environments have evolved a greater capacity for heat tolerance plasticity compared to lizards in cooler environments. Further, the Fellow will determine if bacterial taxa in the gut are associated with increased host heat tolerance plasticity and if probiotic inoculations of these bacteria increase lizard plasticity and fitness in warm island environments. As a result of this project, the Fellow will gain expertise in field-based evolutionary and ecological experiments, physiology, microbiology, and computational biology. The Fellow will also mentor undergraduate researchers in the United States and Panama while assisting them in presenting their work on a popular live-action science show which is viewed by a large and diverse international audience. 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.