NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2021: The genetics, physiology and evolution of diapause

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2022, 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. Specifically, the fellow will investigate the genetics, physiology, and variation of a biological phenomenon called diapause.

Diapause is a period of suspended or arrested development during an insect’s life cycle. The fellow will use the eastern sprice budworm to study diapause. The spruce budworm is a moth species living in the boreal forest across northern America, covering a range from New England to Alaska, and mostly uses diapause to survive harsh winters.

The fellow will investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying variation in diapausing moths. This work is important because the spruce budworm is one of the most destructive pest species in North America, and its 35-year cyclical outbreaks have devastating effects on the lumber industry as well as the boreal ecosystem and carbon dynamics. The proposed activity will help us understand how diapause changes across it’s range, which will be crucial for predictive models of budworm range expansion and benefit a robust pest management plan.

This in turn will aid the communities depending on the boreal forests. Furthermore, the fellow will engage in several outreach activities to engage high school and college level students with insect research.

Diapause is a fundamental feature in the life cycle of many insects, as it allows insects to survive temporary harsh environmental conditions. Precise timing and regulation of the diapause phenotype can have landscape level consequences, both good (i.e. insects can be important food sources), and bad (i.e. harmful pest species). The fellow will (1) characterize the physiological, transcriptomic and chromatin landscape changes that differentiate diapausing and non-diapausing spruce budworm, (2) determine the genetic basis of this change in the diapause phenotype, and (3), investigate how natural selection acts on the diapause specific regulatory landscape across the range.

This study integrates across multiple science disciplines including physiology, functional genomics, genetic mapping and population genetics to study the diapause phenotype. Results from this study will allow us to predict how the diapause phenotype is regulated at different levels, and how natural selection acts on these regulatory mechanisms. The fellow will receive training in integrating physiological and genetic research in an ecological relevant species.

Furthermore, the fellow will organize a functional genomics workshop to make advanced molecular techniques available to non-model researchers.

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.