Postdoctoral Fellowship: PRFB: Integrating the hygric environment into physiological measures across life stages and latitude to predict population viability

Medina-BáEz, Osmary A, Cleveland OH

Investigators

Abstract

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2025. The fellowship supports research and training of the fellow that will contribute to biology in innovative ways. Temperature and moisture influence where organisms, including butterflies, can live, grow and reproduce making them potentially vulnerable to changes in temperature and precipitation. While many studies have focused on responses to temperature, few have considered the effects of moisture change, such as dehydration during extreme drought periods, and how this might combine with temperature to adversely affect an organism. This project examines how changes in moisture influence thermal physiology in butterflies from tropical and temperate locations. The response of different butterfly species to shifts in moisture and temperature throughout their life stages will be analyzed. To broaden the impact of the project, the fellow will mentor undergraduate and high school students. Models of species vulnerability to environmental change predict that tropical organisms are at greatest risk due to narrower thermal tolerance compared to temperate organisms. However, measures of thermal physiology used in these models often fail to incorporate the hygric environment. Because organismal water balance plays a key role in heat balance, accurate assessments of thermal physiology require integration of the hygric environment. In addition, predictive models rarely incorporate different life stages even though some life stages are more sensitive to environmental conditions. This project will address these gaps by integrating the hygric environment into measures of thermal physiology across life stages of tropical and temperate butterflies. These measures of thermal physiology will be used to develop mechanistic niche models to assess population viability of tropical and temperate species in different environments. The fellow will develop creative broader impacts initiatives including a symposium that uses AI translation to enhance communication and the transfer of knowledge among scientists at conferences. The fellow will work with high school teachers to bring authentic research experiences to the classroom to foster excitement for science. Finally, by working with undergraduates, the fellow will support training of the next generation of scientists. 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.