Collaborative Research: LTREB: The importance of resource availability, acquisition, and mobilization to the evolution of life history trade-offs in a variable environment.

合作研究：LTREB：资源可用性、获取和动员对于可变环境中生命史权衡演变的重要性。

• 批准号: 2338394
• 负责人: Andrew McAdam
• 金额: $ 46.09万
• 依托单位: University of Colorado at Boulder
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2024-02-01 至 2029-01-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2338394&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; LTREB; importance; resource

In biology, there is a basic idea that organisms can only spend a unit of energy once. More energy spent on one aspect of life means that less energy is available to spend on other things. This leads to the expectation that organisms that are better at one thing should be worse at something else. The problem is that most of the time when researchers study organisms in nature they find that individuals that are better at one thing are also better at others. One explanation for this is that some individuals just have access to more energy overall – so they can spend more energy on both aspects of life. This idea has been hard to study in nature because it is very hard to measure how much energy individuals have. In this project, researchers will use a long-term study of wild red squirrels to test whether differences in food availability affect how individuals perform in different aspects of their life. The researchers can do this because they can track squirrels through their lifetime and because they can measure how much food squirrels have stored. This is important because this is one of the rare situations where it is possible to measure how much food individuals have and to see how they use this food to fuel different aspects of their life. This research will also help us to understand how wild animals respond to changes in their environment, which will help us to predict their ability to cope with future changes in the environment. This long-term field study will also provide important training to undergraduate and graduate students while building stronger connections and capacity within local communities near the field location. In addition to making their data open to the public, the researchers will also develop tools to help the public explore the data collected and to use the data to answer their own questions. More specifically, this project will test the hypothesis that fundamental life history trade-offs, measures of natural selection on life-history traits and measures of the genetic basis to life-history traits are confounded by individual variation in resource availability. The researchers can quantify the amount of stored food for all individuals in the population to test these fundamental questions. Documented ongoing changes in the availability of food in this population have the potential to not only change the average amount of food available to individuals but also the amount of variability among individuals in food resources. This means that future environmental changes could reveal stronger trade-offs and expose the genetic basis of life history traits to natural selection.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.

在生物学中，有一个基本观念，即生物只能花一次能量。更多的能量在生活的一个方面花费意味着更少的能量可以花在其他事物上。这导致人们的期望是，更好的一件事的生物在其他事情上应该会更糟。问题在于，在大多数情况下，当研究人员在自然界研究生物体时，他们发现一个更好的人在别人方面也更好。对此的一种解释是，有些人可以从整体上获得更多的能量，因此他们可以在生活的两个方面花费更多的精力。这个想法本质上很难研究，因为很难衡量个人拥有多少能量。在该项目中，研究人员将使用对野生红松鼠的长期研究来测试食物可用性的差异是否影响个人在生活的不同方面的表现。研究人员可以这样做，因为他们可以在一生中追踪松鼠，并且可以测量松鼠的储存数量。这很重要，因为这是罕见的情况之一，可以衡量个人拥有多少食物，并了解他们如何使用这种食物来助长生活的不同方面。这项研究还将帮助我们了解野生动物如何应对其环境变化，这将有助于我们预测它们应对环境未来变化的能力。这项长期现场研究还将为本科和研究生提供重要的培训，同时在现场地点附近的当地社区内建立更牢固的联系和能力。除了向公众开放数据外，研究人员还将开发工具，以帮助公众探索收集的数据并使用数据来回答自己的问题。更具体地说，该项目将检验以下假设：基本的生活历史权衡，对生活历史的自然选择的衡量标准以及对生活历史特征的遗传基础的衡量标准与个人资源可用性的个人变化混淆。研究人员可以量化所有人口中所有个人的存储食物数量，以测试这些基本问题。记录在该人群中粮食可用性的持续变化不仅有可能改变个人可用的食物量，而且还可以改变食品资源中个人的可变性。这意味着未来的环境变化可以揭示更强的权衡，并将生活历史特征的遗传基础暴露于自然选择中。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并使用基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响评估标准，被视为通过评估来获得珍贵的支持。