Postdoctoral Fellowship: PRFB: Integrating behavioral interactions across space and time to discover the rules that link phenotypic diversity to ecosystem function

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 project will explore how interactions among individuals drive ecosystem scale function in coral reefs.

Tropical coral reefs provide critical ecosystem services and harbor biodiversity but are threatened due to increased climate extremes and human impacts. However, highly social coral reef fishes may provide a path to resilience through their group-living and collective foraging behavior that links the open ocean to benthic food webs, boosting productivity even when reefs are degraded.

Yet, precisely how such collective behavior drives ecological function, and how this process might be affected by environmental change, remains unknown. This project will advance scientific knowledge of collective behavior and help predict how important ecosystems such as coral reefs will respond to rapid environmental change long-term. The fellow will also make use of this work to develop and expand upon ongoing scientific engagement efforts by hosting science education events for underserved local schools and extending the fellow's ongoing science communication work aimed at amplifying the voices of people underrepresented in STEM.

This project addresses a critical gap in our understanding of how collective behavior functions over long timescales, focusing on one of the most abundant reef planktivores, Chromis multilineata. This project will integrate empirically derived data from both fieldwork and laboratory experiments to uncover the intricate relationship between the dynamics of individual behavioral phenotypes, group composition, collective behavior, and ecosystem function.

Using a semi-natural reef tank environment to maximize ecological realism in the lab, this project tracks fine-scale interactions between individuals to demonstrate how behavioral processes develop and drive ecological function over time. Complementary fieldwork conducted across a range of abiotic conditions will assess how ecological function varies with group composition in the wild.

The fellow will use dynamical mathematical modeling to make quantitative predictions about how different kinds of disturbances will impact ecosystem function. The fellow will gain training in building and interpreting mathematical models and advanced computational methods to develop a broader research program as an independent scientist. The fellow will strive to broaden participation in science by hosting public education events, leveraging collaborations with the Einhorn Center for Community Engagement and the Museum of the Earth to reach wider and more diverse audiences.

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.