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: 2247611
• 负责人: Eric Riddell
• 金额: $ 49.43万
• 依托单位: Iowa 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 2023-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2247611&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 we expect with climate change. Thus, understanding frog skin is key to understanding how frogs will react to climate change. Yet, our 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. Our proposal 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.Our proposal 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, we know relatively little about the evolution of universal structures, such as skin. With their nearly worldwide distribution and reliance on their skin for gas exchange, we use anurans as 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 our 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推向其极限，迫使物种移动，进化或延伸风险。青蛙是地球上最脆弱的物种之一，大约三分之一已经受到延伸的威胁。青蛙和其他两栖动物可以在皮肤上呼吸。然而，它们可渗透的皮肤使青蛙对温度和湿度的变化敏感，我们期望随着气候变化的变化。这是了解青蛙皮肤是了解青蛙将如何对气候变化做出反应的关键。然而，我们对阿努兰皮进化的了解令人惊讶地缺乏。该项目旨在衡量皮肤形态和渗透性的变化，并确定皮肤变异如何影响关键的生存特征，例如呼吸和避免脱水的能力。我们的建议通过将有机生理学纳入气候脆弱性的预测，同时扩大我们对受到严重威胁的动物群体的了解，从而实现了生态学的主要目标。此外，青蛙“皮肤呼吸”提供了一个框架，可以传达从进化（例如收敛和适应性）到生理学（例如氧气转移和水损失）到保护（例如气候变化）的复杂主题。该项目将：1）USU的美洲原住民学生，并历史上排除了ISU的研究和2）产生低成本，互动和公开易于的青蛙皮肤活动，重点是探究和基于发现的进化概念的学习。平衡气体交换需求与脱水的风险平衡的需求在整个生命之树中创造了可预测的进化折衷，并选择了使气体交换不受水分流失的适应性（例如，尽管这些特异性适应的作用，但在Xeric环境中促进了他们在Xeric环境中的促进，我们的脑海中的差异很少，我们在越来越多地促进了他们的整体，例如，我们的脑海中的跨性别差异很小我们使用Anurans作为一个理想的系统，以研究皮肤如何在响应不同的环境选择压力的响应中平衡氧气吸收和水分流失。提高我们对当前的Anuran分布和生活历史演变的理解，并预测物种对未来气候变化的脆弱性。我们对形态学，生理和建模的整合将使皮肤形式和生理学与Anuran的生态学和生物地理学联系起来，以提高我们对Anuran分布，生命历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的法定任务，反映了通过使用基金会的智力效果和宽阔的评估来评估的支持，并以此为珍贵。