Postdoctoral Fellowship: PRFB: Evaluating the Role of Transcriptional Plasticity in Insect Host Specialization

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. Organisms must adapt to changes in their surrounding environment, but the genes that respond to these changes are difficult to identify.

These genes are important for survival, and they can also play a role in forming new species. This project will identify the genes that respond to changes in the environment by studying a group of insects that have narrow diets. By changing the diets of these insects, the fellow will identify specific genes that respond to new environmental conditions.

Finding these genes in insects will add to the current understanding of how organisms adapt to the environment and how changing environments can result in the formation of new species. This new knowledge will help preserve the diversity of organisms on Earth. The data collected from this project will also be used in a lab course to engage students in independent research, which should contribute to broadening participation in scientific careers.

This project will focus on two pine sawfly sister species that differ in their preferred pine hosts: whereas Neodiprion pinetum females have a derived preference for Pinus strobus, N. lecontei females use many different Pinus species other than P. strobus. The fellow will use a split-brood design to characterize differences between N. lecontei and N. pinetum in larval performance traits and larval gene expression on preferred and non-preferred pines.

Then, the fellow will rear recombinant N. lecontei/N. pinetum F2 hybrids on P. strobus to identify gene-expression traits that predict larval performance traits on this novel host. Using a quantitative trait locus approach, the fellow will identify candidate genes underlying larval performance and gene-expression traits in a derived host environment.

The completion of this work will identify mechanistic links between genes, derived gene-expression traits, fitness, and the host-plant environment. Throughout the course of this project, the fellow will receive career training by gaining expertise in the analysis of gene expression data, working with large genomic datasets, and preparing evolutionary experiments in the laboratory.

The fellow will also be mentored on developing an independent research program using specialist insects. Additional larval trait data will be collected and independently analyzed by undergraduate researchers as part of an experiential laboratory course.

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.