CAREER: Harnessing herbarium specimens to investigate effects of phenological shifts on plant-insect interactions

职业：利用植物标本研究物候变化对植物-昆虫相互作用的影响

• 批准号: 2238310
• 负责人: Emily Meineke
• 金额: $ 70.72万
• 依托单位: University of California-Davis
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-09-01 至 2028-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2238310&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Harnessing; herbarium; specimens; investigate

The project will examine how climate change alters interactions between plants and plant-feeding insects. In contrast to 100 years ago, plants today are flowering and producing leaves earlier due to climate warming. Consequently, many organisms that rely on plants are at risk if they cannot keep pace with these changes in plant growth and flowering. The project uses new data sources to examine the effects of climate warming for plants and their insect herbivores which is one of the most diverse groups of organisms on earth. Insect herbivores leave characteristic bite marks when they feed, and these marks can reveal the species of insect that fed on a plant and how much plant tissue was eaten. These bite marks can be seen on preserved plant samples. The project will use plant collections from the past few hundred years to test how changes in the timing of growth and flowering in plants have affected the insects that feed on them. Specifically, the project will test whether earlier timing of plant growth and flowering has led to new interactions of plant and insect herbivore species. Understanding how insects respond to climate change is important for better management of threatened species, agriculture, forestry, and conservation of natural ecosystems. Data will be collected by undergraduate and graduate students, and students will learn about insect herbivores by creating public art that will be displayed at the experimental garden. Together, these efforts will support student learning and scholarship through the lenses of art-science fusion, climate change, and the importance of plant-insect herbivore relationships in nature. Global environmental change is reshuffling biotic communities with uncertain impacts on biodiversity. However, long-term data describing the effects of global change on biotic communities are rare and focus on a narrow set of clades, resulting in severely limited datasets. The overall objective of this project is to determine recent effects of climate change on understudied herbivore communities using data from two key sources: herbarium specimens collected over hundreds of years and an experimental garden mimicking past, current, and future climatic conditions. The project will create a 'damage type guide' that will provide identification of the insect causing the damage, thus facilitating collection of long-term datasets. Through these data sources, this project will assess the potential for novel species interactions resulting from changes in leaf emergence timing over the past 100+ years of climate change. The experimental garden will be located at the UC Davis Arboretum to provide an access point to the public into climate change research. The project will also involve redesigning three courses at UC Davis to focus on learning through art-science fusion and course-based undergraduate research experiences. Students will share their knowledge via creative engagement in K-12 classrooms and in the UC Davis Arboretum.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.

该项目将研究气候变化如何改变植物和以植物为食的昆虫之间的相互作用。与 100 年前相比，由于气候变暖，今天的植物开花和长叶的时间提前了。因此，许多依赖植物的生物体如果无法跟上植物生长和开花的这些变化，就会面临风险。该项目使用新的数据源来研究气候变暖对植物及其食草昆虫的影响，植物和食草昆虫是地球上最多样化的生物群体之一。昆虫食草动物在进食时会留下特征性的咬痕，这些痕迹可以揭示以植物为食的昆虫的种类以及吃了多少植物组织。这些咬痕可以在保存的植物样本上看到。该项目将利用过去几百年的植物收藏来测试植物生长和开花时间的变化如何影响以它们为食的昆虫。具体来说，该项目将测试植物生长和开花时间的提前是否导致植物和昆虫食草动物物种之间出现新的相互作用。了解昆虫如何应对气候变化对于更好地管理受威胁物种、农业、林业和自然生态系统保护非常重要。数据将由本科生和研究生收集，学生将通过创作在实验花园展示的公共艺术来了解昆虫食草动物。这些努力将共同支持学生从艺术与科学融合、气候变化以及自然界中植物与昆虫食草动物关系的重要性等角度进行学习和学术研究。 全球环境变化正在重新洗牌生物群落，对生物多样性产生不确定的影响。然而，描述全球变化对生物群落影响的长期数据很少，并且集中于一小部分进化枝，导致数据集严重有限。该项目的总体目标是利用两个关键来源的数据来确定气候变化对未被充分研究的食草动物群落的近期影响：数百年来收集的植物标本和模仿过去、当前和未来气候条件的实验花园。该项目将创建一个“损害类型指南”，以识别造成损害的昆虫，从而促进长期数据集的收集。通过这些数据源，该项目将评估过去 100 多年的气候变化中叶子出现时间的变化所导致的新物种相互作用的潜力。该实验花园将位于加州大学戴维斯分校植物园，为公众提供一个参与气候变化研究的入口。该项目还将涉及重新设计加州大学戴维斯分校的三门课程，重点关注通过艺术与科学融合和基于课程的本科生研究经验进行学习。学生将通过在 K-12 教室和加州大学戴维斯分校植物园的创造性参与来分享他们的知识。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优点和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。