NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2021: Color polymorphism: a model system for predicting phenotypic evolution in nature

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. Climate change is expected to generate extreme environmental conditions, and our ability to predict the way organisms will respond to projected environmental change is critically important for the future.

In nature, thousands of species have evolved color polymorphism. That is where multiple distinct color morphs, that also differ genetically and behaviorally, coexist within the same species. Color polymorphic species are an ideal system to develop predictive power in biology because often color morphs of the same species are associated with different aspects of the environment.

The aim of this project is to identify repeatable associations between lizard color morph traits, genetics, and specific environmental variables that are expected to change with climate change (temperature, air moisture, precipitation, etc.) to develop predictions about how animals will evolve and adapt to changing environments. The fellow will use the Aegean wall lizard, which has three color morphs: orange, yellow, and white, that differ by environment to study how color morph genetics and environmental change variables interact to produce different color morphs in different environments.

The fellow will engage undergraduates underrepresented in the sciences in research as lab and field assistants. This project will also include an international outreach component that will communicate basic principles of evolution to elementary school children in the San Francisco Bay Area, United States and Athens, Greece with art-based activities.

This research will use genetically determined color morphs of the Aegean wall lizard to identify gene-phenotype-environment interactions that have naturally produced repeated evolution of the same morph phenotypes in similar environments. This research will use color polymorphism as a model system to test for: predictable associations between intraspecific morph diversity and environmental variation, the evolution of repeated morph phenotype-environment associations in isolated populations, and correlated macroevolution of morph phenotypes and environmental variation across many color polymorphic species.

The fellow will train in integrative approaches that combines adaptive landscape theory, genomics, computation, fieldwork, and experiments to identify predictable patterns of phenotypic evolution from complex interactions across biological scales. The fellow will engage undergraduates from underrepresented groups in research and science outreach activities with local and international elementary classrooms.

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.