Eco-evolutionary dynamics of parasitism mediated through variance in host fitness

通过宿主适应性差异介导的寄生生态进化动力学

• 批准号: 2310874
• 负责人: Robert Cox
• 金额: $ 100.42万
• 依托单位: University of Virginia Main Campus
• 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: 2023-06-15 至 2026-05-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2310874&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Eco; evolutionary; dynamics; parasitism; mediated

Nearly all animals and plants are infected by parasites that can reduce health and performance. In addition to these overall effects, parasites are predicted to increase variation among individual hosts in health and performance. Parasites are therefore predicted to shape the ecology and evolution of the host species. These predictions apply to any plant or animal host-parasite interaction but testing them requires a species in which (1) parasites can be manipulated and (2) health and performance can be measured across the entire lifetime for thousands of individuals. This project uses a custom drug delivery method to remove several different species of parasitic worm from a wild population comprised of thousands of individual lizard hosts. These hosts are short-lived and occur on small islands where the entire population can be accurately censused several times per year. Genetic methods have recently been developed to match parents to offspring each year, so lifetime survival and reproduction can be measured for thousands of individuals, in both de-wormed and untreated treatments. The project will test whether and how parasites influence variation in host health and performance. The results will increase understanding of the ecology and evolution of infectious disease while also testing fundamental evolution theory. The project will impact science education by supporting the professional development of science teachers through summer workshops. The workshops focus on building skills in data collection, analysis, and graphing, and in transmitting those skills to K-12 students. Postdoctoral, graduate, and undergraduate researchers will be mentored in this project, with a focus on undergraduates in the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation.Although it is well known that parasites reduce the mean fitness of their hosts, few studies have tested whether parasites influence variance in host fitness or explored the resulting evolutionary dynamics for host populations. This is particularly true when considering total lifetime fitness, which is notoriously difficult to measure in most wild populations. This project will combine new high-throughput techniques in ecological molecular genetics (GT-seq) with established approaches in quantitative genetics (animal models) to provide a detailed, multi-generational characterization of total lifetime fitness and its quantitative genetic architecture in a wild population with both experimental and natural variation in parasite burdens. The nature of the dataset will also allow total lifetime fitness to be decomposed into its components (juvenile survival, adult survival, mating success, reproductive success), and for evolutionary dynamics of disease and parasitism to be considered separately for females and males, thus providing additional insight into key evolutionary hypotheses about sex differences in selection and in parasite resistance and tolerance. The Summer Teacher Workshop will be done in collaboration with makers of educational technology that teaches data skills to middle- and high-school students using authentic statistics combined with “ready- to-teach” modules featuring curated real datasets.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.

几乎所有动物和植物都被寄生虫感染，除了这些总体影响外，寄生虫还会增加个体宿主之间的健康和性能差异，因此预计寄生虫会影响宿主的生态和进化。这些预测适用于任何植物或动物宿主与寄生虫的相互作用，但测试它们需要一个物种，其中（1）可以操纵寄生虫，（2）可以测量数千个个体的整个生命周期的健康和表现。使用定制的药物输送方法来去除来自由数千个个体蜥蜴宿主组成的野生种群的几种不同种类的寄生蠕虫，这些宿主寿命很短，并且发生在小岛上，每年可以对整个种群进行多次准确的普查。该项目将测试寄生虫是否以及如何影响宿主健康和性能的变化，从而可以测量数千个个体的终生存活和繁殖情况。传染病的生态学和进化该项目将通过夏季研讨会支持科学教师的专业发展，重点培养数据收集、分析和制图技能，并将这些技能传授给 K-12 学生，从而影响科学教育。博士后、研究生和本科生研究人员将在该项目中得到指导，重点是路易斯·斯托克斯少数民族参与联盟的本科生。尽管众所周知，寄生虫会降低宿主的平均健康度，但很少有研究测试是否会降低宿主的平均健康度。寄生虫影响差异宿主适应性或探索宿主群体的进化动态，在考虑总生命周期适应性时尤其如此，众所周知，在大多数野生种群中很难测量该项目将结合生态分子遗传学（GT-seq）中的新高通量技术。 ）利用定量遗传学（动物模型）中的既定方法，提供野生种群中总生命适应性及其定量遗传结构的详细、多代特征，并具有寄生虫负担的实验和自然变化。允许分解总的生命周期适应度分解其组成部分（幼年生存、成年生存、交配成功、繁殖成功），并分别考虑雌性和雄性疾病和寄生的进化动力学，从而为有关选择和寄生中性别差异的关键进化假设提供更多见解夏季教师研讨会将与教育技术制造商合作举办，该研讨会使用真实的统计数据以及具有精选真实数据集的“即用型教学”模块来向中学生和高中生教授数据技能。该奖项NSF 的法定使命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。