
NSF Org: |
DBI Division of Biological Infrastructure |
Recipient: |
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Initial Amendment Date: | March 29, 2024 |
Latest Amendment Date: | March 29, 2024 |
Award Number: | 2320675 |
Award Instrument: | Cooperative Agreement |
Program Manager: |
Daniel Marenda
dmarenda@nsf.gov (703)292-2157 DBI Division of Biological Infrastructure BIO Directorate for Biological Sciences |
Start Date: | April 1, 2024 |
End Date: | March 31, 2030 (Estimated) |
Total Intended Award Amount: | $14,999,460.00 |
Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $2,465,534.00 |
Funds Obligated to Date: |
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History of Investigator: |
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Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
149 WOODS HOLE RD FALMOUTH MA US 02540-1644 (508)444-1526 |
Sponsor Congressional District: |
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Primary Place of Performance: |
149 WOODS HOLE RD FALMOUTH MA US 02540-1644 |
Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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Parent UEI: |
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NSF Program(s): | Cross-BIO Activities |
Primary Program Source: |
01002526DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01002728DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01002829DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01002930DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
Program Reference Code(s): | |
Program Element Code(s): |
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Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.074 |
ABSTRACT
The Evolving MetaEcosystems (EvoME) Institute will study the effects of global climate change on Arctic ecosystems. Ecosystems are complex communities of species that have evolved with each other and their shared environment over long periods of time. Understanding how these systems change over time is a Grand Challenge in Biology that is made urgent and policy-relevant by rapid climate change. This is particularly true in the Arctic, which is warming at least three times faster than the global average. Arctic ecosystems are uniquely suited to their extreme environment, and they provide food and livelihoods for human communities. It is critical to know whether species and ecosystems can evolve to match the pace of change, or whether they might fall apart or muddle along in a reduced state. EvoME will bring together experts from across biological disciplines to generate new insights at every scale, from genes to landscapes. It will document natural responses of multiple species in rivers and streamside tundra environments and conduct large-scale experiments on the flow of energy and genes between ecosystems. EvoME will foster a new generation of biologists trained to think and work across disciplines, with special attention to increasing inclusion and retention of researchers from underrepresented backgrounds, by a cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional course, a research fund for students, and a Fellows program. Finally, it will bring journalists into the research process to create?and help researchers create?innovative media and stories through blogs, social media, and radio stories that bring EvoME?s integrated understanding to public audiences, including rural and Alaska Native communities.
The EvoME Institute integrates across biological disciplines and scales of organization to understand how adaptive evolution maintains and shapes ecosystems linked by the flow of evolving organisms and energy (the meta-ecosystem) in response to climate change. New evidence that evolution can occur rapidly necessitates a major reappraisal of the longstanding paradigm that ecosystem and meta-ecosystem resilience can be understood without evolution. EvoME advances eco-evolutionary theory and understanding by integrating from genes to meta-ecosystems to understand how each biological level interacts with the others. In doing so, this institute addresses fundamental questions in genomics, molecular genetics, evolution, physiology, behavior, population and community ecology, and ecosystem biology in the most rapidly warming place on Earth. EvoME will evaluate the current adaptive capacity of key species that integrate Arctic ecosystems along a latitudinal gradient in northern Alaska, including leveraging insights from populations living in hot springs in the Arctic. EvoME will conduct metaecosystem experiments that manipulate energy (litter and insect migration inclusion/exclusion) and gene (transplant and common garden) flow in river/riparian systems. It will combine this information with powerful whole-genome assessments and models to disentangle the processes through which food web responses interact with evolution and alter underlying trait and ecosystem responses. EvoME also will develop novel bio-monitoring equipment, computational algorithms, and new modeling techniques to develop flexible and adaptable forecasting tools. In these ways, EvoME will contribute to a broader, mechanistic, and predictive understanding of the joint ecological and evolutionary responses of Earth?s meta-ecosystems to 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.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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