Postdoctoral Fellowship: PRFB: Stress-induced phenotypic plasticity and generational effects in the silk-producing glow worm Orfelia fultoni

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2025. The fellowship supports research and training of the fellow that will contribute to biology in innovative ways. Larval insects facing environmental stress can respond both behaviorally and genetically, but these responses potentially come at the expense of development and reproduction.

Further, these behavioral and genetic responses can potentially be passed on to offspring, leaving future generations better able to survive similar challenges. The fellow will identify the behavioral and genetic changes in a silk- and glue-producing insect exposed to varying levels of prey availability, as well as how these responses can be transferred to offspring.

This research will provide a better understanding of the mechanisms through which organisms, particularly other silk- and glue-producing species, actively adapt to their environment while simultaneously describing the glue biomechanical properties of North America’s only native glowworm. Additionally, many arthropod silks and glues have commercial, medical, and engineering applications, and the glue studied in this project is novel in its ability to function in extreme humidity, so this research may support future applied research on similar biomaterials.

The fellow will teach an insect biology course at the host institution and design and teach an arachnid biology course to facilitate interactions between biologists and non-scientists, reduce public fear of arachnids, and dispel common misconceptions.

This project will elucidate the interactions between environment, phenotypic plasticity, and developmental and generational effects using the sessile trap-building glowworm Orfelia fultoni. The fellow will first characterize how larval O. fultoni behavior, glue biomechanical properties, and gene expression vary in response to prey availability. The fellow will then rear the offspring of these organisms and conduct phenotype assays to assess the degree to which O. fultoni confer phenotypic (both biomaterial properties and web morphology) and genetic modifications to their offspring.

This project will additionally serve to establish O. fultoni as an effective system in which to study silk and glue properties while simultaneously developing a framework to probe the interactions of sessility, phenotypic plasticity, developmental effects, and epigenetic effects in other silk- and glue-producing species. The fellow will be trained in integrating long-read sequencing and transcriptomic analyses into behavioral evolution studies, as well as mentoring skills.

The fellow will also support the professional development of graduate and undergraduate students in field data collection and analysis in a course at a biological research station.

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.