CAREER: Integrating Western Science and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) to Understand Aphonopelma Diversity Across the Madrean Sky Islands and Educate K-12 Tribal Students

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).

Adapting to climate change is a fundamental challenge for life on Earth. As organisms are forced to move in search of hospitable habitat, species leave areas no longer favorable and expand into new areas, or they go extinct. These events are playing out across North America’s Madrean Pine-Oak woodlands, a biodiversity hotspot, as increasing temperatures and decreasing precipitation push the endemic organisms further up the mountains.

The sky islands are natural laboratories perfect for evolutionary studies because each sky island can be thought of as a replicate, with each representing a time point in an ongoing natural experiment. With one-fifth of the world’s invertebrates at risk for extinction, species with a limited ability to move, like the long-lived Aphonopelma – the only tarantula genus in the United States - are of particular concern.

If these species are lost to extinction before discovery, this biodiversity knowledge will be lost forever. This research will inform our understanding of island biogeography theory and the evolutionary history of the Madrean Pine-Oak Woodlands biodiversity hotspot. Importantly, this biodiversity hotspot is found within the sovereign land of the Apache and Tohono O’odham peoples.

This land, its geology, and the flora and fauna holds significant scientific and cultural knowledge (Traditional Ecological Knowledge – TEK) for these tribes. Gained through thousands of years of living with the land, tribes have an intimate understanding of the interconnections between people and the environment (e.g., how climate change has altered the seasonal patterns and distributions of sky island biodiversity).

The goal of this research is to integrate Western science and TEK to better understand the evolutionary patterns and processes that led to the remarkable radiation of Aphonopelma spiders throughout the sky islands, and how climate change is going to impact this diversity in the future. The education component of this project will develop a unique STEM program for San Carlos Apache K-12 students that integrates their TEK with modern research to show them how they can become the next generation of protectors of their tribe’s natural resources.

The overarching question this research looks to answer is whether the Madrean Archipelago has been a generator for North American tarantula diversity. Specifically, this research will use genome data to understand if the sky island Aphonopelma species evolved once or many times. This will allow the researchers to determine what advantageous changes in the genome occurred when species moved into the sky islands and diversified by adapting to new habitats, and whether sky island species will be able to adapt to global climate change.

Lastly, the researchers will work with San Carlos Apache elders to show tribal K-12 students how TEK and Western science can be utilized together to better understand the world around them. This combined effort will take students into the different sky island ranges to collect specimens and link the organisms with the land and their TEK. In the classroom, this collaboration will use a “LEGO DNA sequencer” to teach the students about DNA and genetics and introduce students to genome sequencing and bioinformatics.

This project will produce transformative results with high scientific impact by informing our understanding of how climate change has and will affect the genetic diversity of a biodiversity hotspot, as well as by including the most underrepresented group in the sciences, Native peoples, in this process.

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.