Joel Abraham
$240,000
Simonis, Molly C
Ohio
Biological Sciences (BIO)
This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2024, Integrative Research Investigating the Rules of Life Governing Interactions Between Genomes, Environment, and Phenotypes. The fellowship supports research and training of the fellow that will contribute to the area of Rules of Life in innovative ways. A long-standing challenge of disease ecology is how to scale individual variation in immune responses up to population-level pathogen spread. This challenge is further complicated by how individual differences in immunity can be caused by stressors (e.g. energetically costly life stages, exposure to contaminants). This project investigates how stressors affect immunity and infection as well as how differences in immunity translate to pathogen spread within the larger host population. This project will broaden participation by providing research experiences to underrepresented undergraduate students in the field and in the lab as well as provide quantitative training to undergraduate and graduate students.<br/><br/>Host immunity is the primary barrier to infection and, as such, can determine disease risks in natural populations. Intrinsic and extrinsic stressors throughout the lifespan of a host can alter immunity, which can then impact pathogen dynamics within the host population. This research aims to understand the complex interplay between wildlife stressors, immunity, and infection. Specifically, this research will quantify wildlife immunity under simultaneous stressors of reproduction and contaminant exposure at the individual level, then use mathematical models to scale those responses up to shape infection dynamics at the population level. Simonis will build epidemiological models and explore how varying relationships between contaminant exposure and immune-relevant parameters drive infection prevalence across the host annual cycle. For empirical data collection, Simonis will capture big brown bats in Oklahoma, which are regularly exposed to contaminants due to their resiliency in human-disturbed habitats and also harbor coronaviruses across their range in North America. Blood, saliva, fecal, and fur samples will be collected from bats to measure contaminant exposure, innate immunity, and coronavirus infection status and intensity. Underlying empirical relationships will inform immune-relevant parameters in epidemiological models, and Simonis will identify parameter combination(s) that have the greatest likelihood for influencing coronavirus prevalence in the field. This project will inform how human-induced environmental disruptions can drive seasonal epidemics in natural populations and will provide the mentorship and training needed for Simonis’ research goals in disease ecology and ecoimmunology and to obtain a tenure-track faculty position.<br/><br/>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.