NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology: How Does Sociality Impact Evolution?

Shah, Shailee, Rochester NY

Investigators

Abstract

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2023, Broadening Participation of Groups Underrepresented in Biology. The Fellowship supports a research and training plan for the Fellow that will increase the participation of groups underrepresented in biology. It will broaden participation of these groups in two ways: (1) by implementing a grant writing workshop that will enhance the diversity of postdoctoral scholars in the US, and (2) by funding the Fellow to engage in novel research investigating the impact of sociality on evolution. Sociality—i.e., individuals living in social groups—is widespread across animal taxa. The organization of a social group, or its social structure, determines which group members become breeders and thus pass their genes onto the next generation. Thus, sociality can have a considerable impact on the genetic makeup of a population, yet this link between sociality and evolution remains understudied. This research will leverage variation in sociality across time and space within one species—the superb starling—to understand how sociality can impact evolution, a fundamental process that shapes the diversity of life on our planet. The Fellow will use a multidisciplinary approach to investigate the relationship between sociality and evolution. First, using a more than 20-year dataset from nine groups of cooperatively breeding superb starlings within a population in central Kenya, the Fellow will examine how temporal variation in social structure, driven by the impact of rainfall on immigration and reproduction, results in changes in allele frequencies over time. Next, using genomic data from populations at eight sites spanning a country-wide rainfall gradient, the Fellow will examine the impact of spatial variation in social complexity on the relative strength of different evolutionary processes within the same species. The project's broader impacts are designed to help demystify the “hidden curriculum” of grant-writing for late-stage graduate students and new postdocs, to increase participation of individuals from groups underrepresented in biology at the postdoctoral level. The Fellow’s training will help develop an independent research program combining behavioral ecology and population genomics to investigate sociality in preparation for the next stage of her academic career. 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.