Collaborative Research: Evolving thicker skin: Understanding how adaptations to a universal trade-off dictate the climate vulnerability and ecology of an imperiled vertebrate clade

合作研究：进化更厚的皮肤：了解对普遍权衡的适应如何决定濒临灭绝的脊椎动物进化枝的气候脆弱性和生态

• 批准号: 2247610
• 负责人: Molly Womack
• 金额: $ 49.83万
• 依托单位: Utah State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-08-01 至 2026-07-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2247610&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Evolving; thicker; skin

Climate change is pushing many organisms towards their limits, forcing species to move, evolve, or risk extinction. Frogs are among the most vulnerable species on the planet with roughly a third already under threat of extinction. Frogs, and other amphibians, can breathe across their skin. However, their permeable skin leaves frogs sensitive to changes in temperature and humidity, which is expected with climate change. Thus, understanding frog skin is key to understanding how frogs will react to climate change. Yet, knowledge of anuran skin evolution is surprisingly lacking. This project aims to measure variation in skin form and permeability and determine how skin variation affects key survival traits, like their ability to breathe and avoid dehydration. This project accomplishes a major goal in ecology by incorporating organismal physiology into predictions of climate vulnerability while simultaneously expanding our knowledge of a critically threatened animal group. Furthermore, frog “skin breathing” provides a framework to communicate complex topics ranging from evolution (e.g., convergence and adaptation) to physiology (e.g., oxygen transfer and water loss) to conservation (e.g., climate change). This project will: 1) mentor Native American students at USU and historically excluded students at ISU in research and 2) generate a low-cost, interactive, and publicly accessible frog skin activity focused on inquiry and discovery-based learning of evolutionary concepts.The work seeks to understand how a universal constraint underlying gas exchange dictates climate vulnerability and ecology in an imperiled vertebrate clade. Balancing the need for gas exchange with the risk of dehydration creates predictable evolutionary trade-offs across the tree of life and has selected for adaptations that decouple gas exchange from water loss (e.g. unique nasal morphologies in mammals and birds, stomata density and size in plants). Despite understanding the role of these clade-specific adaptations for promoting life in xeric environments,relatively little is known about the evolution of universal structures, such as skin. With their nearly worldwide distribution and reliance on their skin for gas exchange, anurans are an ideal system to investigate how skin has evolved to balance oxygen uptake and water loss in response to varying environmental selection pressures. The proposed project has three aims: 1) quantify how frog skin has evolved over the past 200 million years and in-response to what abiotic and biotic factors, 2) experimentally test anuran skin’s ability to decouple respiration and water loss, and 3) incorporate physiological data into activity budget models to improve an understanding of current anuran distributions and life-history evolution and predict species’ vulnerability to future climate change. Our integration of morphology, physiology, and modeling will tie skin form and physiology to anuran ecology and biogeography to improve our understanding of anuran distributions, life-history evolution, and species’ vulnerability to future climate change.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.

气候变化正在将许多生物体推向极限，迫使物种迁移、进化或面临灭绝的风险，青蛙是地球上最脆弱的物种之一，大约三分之一的青蛙和其他两栖动物已经面临灭绝的威胁。然而，它们的皮肤具有渗透性，因此对温度和湿度的变化很敏感，因此，了解青蛙的皮肤是了解青蛙如何应对气候变化的关键。令人惊讶的是缺乏。该项目旨在测量皮肤形态和渗透性的变化，并确定皮肤变化如何影响关键的生存特征，例如呼吸和避免脱水的能力。该项目通过将生物生理学纳入气候脆弱性的预测中，同时扩大我们的研究范围，实现了生态学的一个主要目标。此外，青蛙的“皮肤呼吸”提供了一个框架来传达从进化（例如趋同和适应）到生理学（例如氧气转移和失水）到保护等复杂主题。 （例如，气候变化）。该项目将：1）指导 USU 的美国原住民学生和历史上被 ISU 排除在外的学生进行研究，2）开展低成本、互动且可公开访问的青蛙皮肤活动，重点关注探究和发现——这项工作旨在了解气体交换背后的普遍约束如何决定濒临灭绝的脊椎动物分支的气候脆弱性和生态，平衡气体交换的需求与脱水的风险在整个系统中产生可预测的进化权衡。尽管了解这些进化枝特异性适应对于促进干旱环境中的生命的作用，对于皮肤等普遍结构的进化知之甚少，无尾目动物几乎遍布全球，并且依赖皮肤进行气体交换，因此是研究皮肤如何进化以平衡吸氧和失水的理想系统。为了应对不同的环境选择压力，拟议的项目有三个目标：1）量化青蛙皮肤在过去 2 亿年中如何进化以及对非生物和生物因素的反应，2）通过实验测试无尾动物皮肤解耦呼吸的能力。和水分流失，3）将生理数据纳入活动预算模型，以提高对当前金分布和生活史进化的理解，并预测物种对未来气候变化的脆弱性。生理学和建模将皮肤形态和生理学与无尾动物生态学和生物地理学联系起来，以提高我们对无尾动物分布、生活史进化以及物种对未来气候变化的脆弱性的理解。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并被认为值得支持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。