NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2020: Individual and population-level effects of water in a tritrophic system: impacts on pollination, herbivory, and parasitism

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2020, Broadening Participation of Groups Under-represented in Biology. The fellowship supports a research and training plan for the Fellow that will increase the participation of groups underrepresented in biology. Plants are essential in maintaining the food supply and in the conservation of natural ecosystems.

In agricultural and natural systems, plants do not live in isolation; they are affected by interactions with other species and by physical conditions. The research will examine how ecological interactions including pollination and disease combine with water availability to affect a plant species, a butterfly species, whose caterpillars consume the plant, and a lethal virus that infects the caterpillars.

The results will provide information on how drought, disease, and herbivorous insects affect the population dynamics of the interacting species. The broadening participation component of this proposal aims to promote excitement and curiosity of people for plant biology and shift current perceptions of scientists. The Fellow will broaden the participation of underrepresented minorities in the sciences through outreach in the form of the development and implementation of bilingual (English and Spanish) educational materials.

Educational content will be focused on plant ecology and be used to reach out to the large Spanish-speaking population of San Diego county.

The Fellow will manipulate water availability to blue passionflower plants (Passiflora caerulea) and conduct controlled epidemics and infections of nuclear polyhedrosis virus (NPV) on the larval stage of gulf fritillary butterflies (Agraulis vanillae), to document the effects of water and the presence of NPV on the population dynamics of the interacting species, the pollination-related traits of the plant (P. caerulea), and the pollination-related traits of the adult pollinator (A. vanillae). This work will integrate experimental manipulations (controlled infections and epidemics) and mathematical models to generate a framework that considers the overarching impacts that water has on host-pathogen, plant-herbivore, and plant-pollinator interactions.

These experimental manipulations will provide information on how drought and presence of NPV affect traits of the plants related to how they attract pollinating insects, such as the size and number of flowers, as well as traits of the adult butterflies that affect their ability to pollinate plants. To broaden the participation of under-represented groups in science, the Fellow will focus on generating outreach activities for the Spanish-speaking population of San Diego, California with the aim to increase knowledge about the importance of plant research in everyday life.

This will be achieved by working with K-12 students in Spanish dual-language immersion programs and a wider non-academic Spanish-speaking audience that attends Hispanic-related community events in San Diego.

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.