Postdoctoral Fellowship: PRFB: Mechanisms and test of plasticity-mediated persistence

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2024, 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. This research investigates a fundamental question in biology: how do organisms respond to changing environments?

Populations face extinction if evolution cannot keep pace. This work investigates how an individual’s genes and environment interact to allow for rapid acclimation and adaptation to altered environments. Such work better informs predictions of how organisms may avoid extinction in rapidly changing environments.

By training undergraduate students in research techniques, crafting educational displays at local museums, and developing lesson plans on related topics in ecology and evolution, this project also will enhance public engagement with science, and help prepare the next diverse generation of biologists.

Phenotypic plasticity – or the ability of organisms to change their traits in response to changes in their environment – can allow individuals to better match a new environment within their lifetime. It is thought that this ability may allow populations to avoid extinction in altered environments and buy time for evolution to occur – but this hypothesis remains largely untested.

This project uses the model nematode worm, Caenorhabditis elegans to evaluate conditions under which plasticity contributes to the persistence of populations in novel environments. The fellow will use a genome-wide association study to characterize the mechanisms of environmental assessment and how they vary across natural populations. The fellow will then use experimental evolution to evaluate how worms varying in plasticity for production of an alternative life stage (the dauer) persist and evolve in novel environments.

The fellow will also use gene editing to manipulate plasticity and ask whether this ability to change traits within a generation can be necessary for population persistence across many generations in novel environments. This project will demonstrate if plasticity can promote population persistence, under what conditions, and how this occurs. The fellow will learn new techniques in genomic analysis and the use of genetic tools while expanding the conceptual and methodological scope of their research program and building mentorship skills.

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.