Collaborative Research: The mismeasure of GxE: causes and consequences of environmental exposures for the evolution of plasticity

About This Grant

How do populations evolve in complex and changing environments? Why do some populations have the necessary genetic variation to adapt to environmental change, while others do not? This research proposes to answer these questions by combining ideas from genetics and behavioral biology. Instead of starting at the population level and working towards mechanisms, the investigators will instead start with the developmental processes that differ across individuals to produce variation that fuels evolutionary change. The focus will be on the relationship(s) between an individual’s choice of environment (e.g., where to live) and the developmental processes that are shaped by that environment (e.g., their later behavior and survival). The research will integrate theory, and experiments with fruit flies, to study the links between environment choice and development, and how these links differ between individuals, at the population, individual, and genomic scales, and across generations. This approach will develop and test new mathematical tools that will allow future researchers to predict the evolutionary consequences of environmental variation for any population. As part of this research, the investigators will mentor and train undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers at multiple institutions for four years; and, they will run a summer research program for high school teachers to provide experience with hands-on research and guide them to develop lesson plans in mathematical theory and genetics for their classrooms. Therefore, this research will uncover fundamental principles of evolution necessary to predict population vulnerabilities to environmental change while training the next generation of leaders in science. The goal of this research is to develop a comprehensive framework that links functional genetic mechanisms of trait expression with organism-level environment preferences to predict GxE within and among generations. The research will combine experiments and theoretical models. At the organismal level, the Aims will interrogate links between preference for a particular environment, and experience in each environment—and how these processes result in expressed patterns of plasticity and fitness. This approach will provide understanding of which individuals will be plastic, and why. The next step is to identify underlying gene expression networks that produce variation in behavior and functional links between environment choice and plasticity. Simultaneously, the investigators will develop population level theoretical models that will examine how variation in environmental exposures influences genetic variation in responses to environments, and how these processes together control the expression of GxE and influence its evolution. By coordinating experimental work and population-genetic models of the evolutionary causes of GxE, this research will provide biologists with a rigorous conceptual toolkit from which to interpret or apply these ideas to any organism. Together, these efforts will “put the pieces together” to produce a priori, bottom-up predictions about GxE and its evolution, predictions which are currently lacking. At the same time, the investigators will run a Research Experience for Teachers (RET) program, using established best practices. The RET will impact hundreds of students from underrepresented groups by enhancing the expertise of their teachers with critical hands-on biology research experience. 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.