2008 — 2009 |
Martin, Lynn |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Sicb Symposium: Psychoneuroimmunology Meets Integrative Biology. January 3-7, 2009. Boston, Ma @ University of South Florida
The endocrine, immune and nervous systems help animals adjust their behavior to survive challenging conditions. Historically, these systems were studied independently but now they are recognized as an integrated network, which explain how stress can increase chances of sickness in many species. Most work in this new field, psychoneuroimmunology, or PNI, has focused on improvement of human health, but many discoveries might reconcile basic biological problems such as why animals reduce activity when they get sick. Reduced activity, as well as reduced food intake, increased sleep, and lack of interest in pleasurable stimuli, comprise a suite of sickness behaviors that may serve to redirect an animal's priorities towards survival of infection.
The goals of the symposium are two-fold. First, PNI researchers will be brought together with comparative physiologists to begin generating frameworks for testing some of the above ideas. PNI researchers tend to be lab-based and work on domesticated rodents whereas comparative physiologists often work on wild animals in the field. Results of these interactions will be disseminated to the public and broader scientific community through the SICB website and papers in the primary scientific literature. Second, the symposium will represent an excellent training experience for students, especially underrepresented groups. Interactions at the symposium will connect promising new scientists to potential mentors. Also, historically underrepresented students will be highlighted in the symposium, as at least three of six trainees funded to attend and present their data will be women or minorities.
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2009 — 2015 |
Martin, Lynn |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Physiological Mediation of Vertebrate Invasions @ University of South Florida
This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
Invasive species are a large and growing threat to ecosystem function, biodiversity and even human health. However, the traits that enable some species to expand their ranges and become pests remain understudied. The focus of the project is to ascertain how the world?s most common songbird, the house sparrow, has been able to colonize most of the planet. Native to Eurasia, this species now is found on all continents but Antarctica. Some invasions are still ongoing, such as the one in Kenya that began about 50 years ago. Introduced to the coastal city of Mombasa, the species is spreading westward towards Uganda predominantly into areas occupied by humans. It is hypothesized that this range expansion is being facilitated by adjustments in physiological traits, namely sacrifices of expensive immune defenses.
The emerging field of ecological immunology is revealing that contrary to intuition, animals do not always possess maximal levels of immune defense; in some contexts, such as during invasions, they appear to sacrifice particularly costly components to allocate resources to more immediately lucrative activities, such as reproduction. To test the hypothesis that invasions are fostered by sacrifices of immune defenses, comparative field and lab studies across Kenya will be conducted over several years. This interdisciplinary approach will involve modern technologies in a 'wild' setting, and will provide new insight into how to control animal invasions. The impacts of the work will be broad involving the joint efforts of American students and scientists, staff at the National Museum of Kenya, and native Kenyan schoolchildren and their teachers. In sum, the work will provide new information for an underexplored area of evolutionary biology, improve our ability to preempt invasions, and simultaneously reinforce scientific relationships in parts of the world where such networks are yet rare.
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2010 — 2016 |
Martin, Lynn Ardia, Daniel Hawley, Dana |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Rcn: Refining and Diversifying Ecological Immunology @ University of South Florida
Immunity to parasites has historically been understudied in evolutionary ecology. In recent years efforts to understand the causes and consequences of natural variation in immune function in wild animals, termed ecological immunology, has transformed multiple realms of biology. To foster continued productivity and expansion of this new field, theoretical refinement and methodological consistency will be critical. This grant will help bring together 36 internationally recognized ecologists, evolutionary biologists, and immunologists to i) develop new techniques and concepts, ii) enhance breadth and depth of research questions, iii) establish new interdisciplinary collaborations, and iv) stimulate outreach and training opportunities for schoolteachers and the public (through a routinely updated website). This network will be open to all scientists. The current network membership is highly diverse, with 50% female members and many individuals who identify themselves as belonging to minorities. Such a diverse group, in conjunction with meetings held outside the USA (2 out of 5 over a five year period), will foster a sense of international community and expose early-career participants to a multitude of scientific and social cultures. Also, the direct engagement of high school teachers in this program will augment the inclusion of evolutionary thinking in American elementary, middle and high school classrooms. In sum, the network will provide novel perspective to evolutionary biology and immunology, both of which should be insightful for human health. Pedagogically, this network will provide training for students from underrepresented backgrounds and expose high school teachers, their students, and the interested public to a field of truly integrative, modern science.
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0.915 |
2012 — 2014 |
Martin, Lynn Liebl, Andrea (co-PI) [⬀] |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Dissertation Research: Adaptive Behavioral and Physiological Changes Among Populations Undergoing Range Expansion @ University of South Florida
Non-native species cause major ecological and economic damage in their introduced range; it is important to identify predictors of invasiveness to prevent future invasions. This information might also prove to be important is assessing the vulnerability of native species to environmental change. One of the most recent introduction events, the house sparrow (Passer domesticus) to Kenya, is still expanding beyond the site of initial introduction. Kenyan house sparrows do not have high genetic diversity, however still exhibit extensive behavioral and physiological variation; interestingly, the observed variation is correlated with the estimated age of the population. House sparrows closest to the edge of the range are more exploratory and release more stress hormones (glucocorticoids) in response to stressors than those closer to the site of initial introduction. However, what these trait differences mean in terms of fitness along the range expansion is unknown; further, how these differences arise given the lack of genetic diversity is also unknown. The goal of the present research is to determine A) if increased exploration and stress hormones grant a fitness advantage at the range edge, but a disadvantage in more familiar habitats; and B) whether these differences arise due to differences in maternal care during offspring development. To test these questions, observation of natural parental care as well as manipulattion of a mother's ability to provision during the nestling period in nestbox colonies will be carried out in Kenya. The PI predicts that increased exploration and stress hormones increase fitness at the edge of a range, but decrease it at the site of introduction. Further, it is also expected that food supplementation will generate offspring most like those naturally occurring at the site of introduction and a reduction of provisioning will produce offspring similar to those at the range edge. The proposed study will strengthen international collaborations and provide research opportunities for underrepresented minority STEM undergraduates.
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2013 — 2017 |
Martin, Lynn Unnasch, Thomas |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Stress Hormone Effects On Disease Resistance, Tolerance and Transmission @ University of South Florida
Superspreaders are disproportionately responsible for the infections of other hosts. Perhaps the best-known human superspreader was Typhoid Mary, who caused 53 deaths due to Salmonella bacteria transmission. Although the frequency of "Typhoid Marys" is unclear, they are probably not rare. Superspreading is implicated in the rapid expansion of SARS (Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and HIV across the globe. For most infectious diseases, 20% of hosts cause 80% of infections. The goal of this research is to determine whether glucocorticoids, major vertebrate stress hormones that have been implicated in disease transmission, are involved in superspreading. Stress hormones could impact superspreading by affecting how parasites (or vectors, such as mosquitos and biting flies) choose hosts on which to feed, how hosts resist or tolerate parasites, or how hosts transmit parasites to other hosts or vectors. Surprisingly, there has never been a systematic study of the effects of stress hormones on all aspects of one complex host-vector-parasite system. This knowledge gap is significant and deserves attention because many anthropogenic and natural factors alter stress hormone regulation, and these factors are increasingly important in the context of global change. By knowing how and when stress hormones affect host-parasite interactions, we may become better able to predict and control zoonotic disease outbreaks.
Intellectual merit: To investigate the role of stress hormones in superspreading, interactions among zebra finches (ZEFI), Culex pipiens mosquitos, and West Nile virus (WNV) will be studied. WNV was chosen because it has decimated some songbird populations and is thought responsible for more than 33,000 human infections and 1150 deaths. ZEFI and Culex were chosen because their genomes have been sequenced, providing opportunities for strong experimental approaches. Stress hormones are predicted to impact i) ZEFI behavior to Culex exposure, ii) Culex blood-feeding preference on ZEFI, iii) ZEFI resistance to WNV infection, iv) ZEFI tolerance of WNV infection, and/or v) ZEFI competency to transmit WNV to Culex. Ultimately, data will be used to determine directly when stress hormones have the largest impacts, information valuable for human and wildlife populations.
Broader impacts: In animals, superspreading appears important for the transmission of several zoonotic diseases (infections that spill from animal into human populations) such as West Nile virus and some hantaviruses. In the context of global change, basic research on understanding superspreading has significant societal value because zoonotic diseases are predicted to become more prevalent. Collaboration with the Tampa Museum of Science and Industry, which attracts more than one million guests annually, will include the development of a Science Works Theater that helps the public understand disease ecology. Training workshops for Hillsborough County high school teachers will also be held, providing teachers tools to train incipient scientists in modern disease biology. For USF students, about 40% of whom come from under-represented backgrounds, robust learning experiences will be provided. Individuals on the project will learn animal husbandry, minor surgeries, how to work in a high-security infectious disease research facility, modern lab assays, data analysis, and scientific writing.
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2017 — 2021 |
Martin, Lynn Jiang, Hong Yuan (co-PI) [⬀] |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Collaborative Research: Constraints of Biomass On Innate Immunity Across Terrestrial Mammals @ University of South Florida
This project addresses two long-standing questions in biology, how genomes become phenomes and how organisms maintain stability through change, by investigating how body size affects immune defenses in terrestrial mammals. Although body mass is one of the strongest influences on many physiological traits, effects of body size are not known for immune systems. Through an unprecedented comparative approach, the research tests whether body size explains why some species are more susceptible to parasites and more likely to act as parasite reservoirs, whereas other species are resistant. Specifically, the research will provide new information on how functional forms of innate immunity relate to body size among >150 zoo-housed terrestrial mammal species spanning a broad range of sizes. Results will provide a framework for understanding of mammalian immune variation has the potential to enhance models of disease spread by providing predictions about the level of immune defense expected in species never before studied. The project fosters career development for two young investigators, a postdoctoral researcher, and 8-10 undergraduate research students. Participants will develop outreach activities for zoos and for biology classes at local middle and high schools, to enhance the educational effectiveness of zoo exhibits and lesson plans. These activities will demonstrate how comparative research is relevant to understanding human and animal health.
This project investigates whether and how body mass is related to the architecture of antimicrobial immune defenses in terrestrial mammals, an unstudied aspect of size-scaling. Host size likely affects i) the chance of exposure to infectious organisms, ii) the ability of immune defenses to keep pace with pathogen replication, iii) the ability of host surveillance mechanisms to detect threats in a comparatively large risk space. The project will determine how functional forms of innate immunity relate to body size among >150 zoo-housed species of terrestrial mammals spanning 7 orders of magnitude in body mass. In addition, protein expression for innate immune defenses as a function of body mass among 10 primate species spanning 5 orders of magnitude in size will be quantified. Using zoo-housed animals, which experience similar developmental histories in common environments, minimizes effects of confounding variables inherent to the study of wild individuals. Measuring functional antimicrobial responses is preferable to less direct assays of host defense. The transcriptomic methods will show which innate immune genes, gene networks, and/or gene modules are most sensitive to body mass. This project addresses two Grand Challenges in Organismal Biology, and has the potential to transform how scientists think about host-parasite interactions. The transcriptomic data generated will contribute to other systems biology pursuits, including understanding how size may constrain the evolution of regulatory processes in vertebrate animals. The participants, including 8-10 undergraduates, will develop interpretive displays and exhibits for zoos, and lesson plans for middle- and high-school biology classes to engage and educate students and the public and to demonstrate the relevance of comparative research.
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0.915 |
2020 — 2024 |
Jiang, Hong Yuan (co-PI) [⬀] Martin, Lynn |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Imagine: Collaborative Research: Epigenetic Potential and Range Expansion in the House Sparrow @ University of South Florida
Some species have managed to colonize much of the planet, but others have narrow geographic ranges. Answering why some species can live so many places is interesting to basic biology, namely because it reveals the details of evolutionary processes. However, this form of research also has practical value, as it could help us understand how species come to be pests, causing economic damage and sometimes spreading disease. Our goal here is to ask if the secret to the success of one globally-distributed bird, the house sparrow, has to do with the way it uses its genome to combat parasites. No place on Earth is safe from infection, so when animals colonize new places, they must kill or control new parasites, or the invasion fails. Preliminary data show that house sparrows have an exceptional ability to adjust their immune systems via a process called DNA methylation. We liken this ability to knobs on a radio; more knobs mean more sophisticated control of sound quality. For house sparrows, more successful birds seem to have more knobs in their genomes, which we expect helps them adjust their immune gene expression and thus control especially new parasites well. With this grant, we?ll perform experiments to test directly if more genome control knobs mean better protection from infections, then we?ll compare genome knob number between native and introduced groups of sparrows, expecting more knobs in invading birds. We?ll also study sparrows in museum collections, asking how knob number has changed since introductions first happened in the 1850s.
Our plan is to leverage the near-ubiquity of the house sparrow (Passer domesticus) to learn how the CpG (i.e., cytosines proximal to guanines in DNA sequences) content of gene regulatory regions influenced the distribution of this avian species. CpG content, something we term epigenetic potential (EP), might allow genotypes to mask and manifest phenotypic plasticity reversibly within generations, as some CpG sites alter gene expression when methylated. In support, preliminary data reveal that i) introduced sparrow populations have more CpG sites in two immune gene promoters than native populations, and ii) EP in promoters, but not exons, declined since introduction ~170 years ago in four independent populations. We expect that EP represents a form of adaptive potential, providing organisms with a propensity to cope with the novel conditions. In particular, we expect EP to be important to the regulation of Toll-like receptors, major microbial surveillance mechanisms that reside on and in leukocytes. In a series of experiments and descriptive field and museum studies, we will ask how are EP, DNA methylation, and TLR expression related within individual sparrows, whether EP for TLRs protective against gut microbial infections, if EP in TLRs influences gut microbial communities in ongoing range expansions, and finally whether EP for TLRs important to range expansions historically? The term, adaptive potential, connotes a latent ability of organisms to cope with or exploit novel conditions. The core concept of our proposal, EP, could be one measurable form of adaptive potential, applicable to many animal systems.
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.
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0.915 |
2021 — 2026 |
Martin, Lynn |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Imagine Collaborative Research: Linking Individual Variation in Immunity and Behavior to Landscape Patterns in Disease Risk Using the National Ecological Observatory Network (Neon) @ University of South Florida
Understanding the factors that reduce infections in animals is an essential step towards reducing human disease risk because an estimated 60% of pathogens that infect humans can also infect animals (including the virus that causes COVID-19). However, it is difficult to predict infectious disease risk in animal populations because it is not understood how changes in the quality of an animal’s environment (e.g., temperature, abundance of food) may change disease rates. This project will investigate how variation in habitat quality affects the ecological dynamics of Lyme disease, the most common vector-borne disease in the US, affecting the health and well-being of over 300,000 people annually. Through a collaboration with the National Ecological Observatory Network, the research team will measure the effects of habitat quality on the behavioral and immune system traits of mice at 8 sites across the northeastern U.S. and develop statistical models to link these animal data to Lyme disease risk. This project will benefit society by improving our ability to identify the times and places where risk of Lyme disease exposure can be minimized, directly benefitting hundreds of thousands of people each year. Through outreach, the project will educate the public about the factors that affect infectious disease and provide significant opportunities for training of high-school students, undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs underrepresented in STEM fields.
Many behavioral and immune system traits are sensitive to the environment. But the extent to which this variation drives infectious disease risk in nature remains obscure. For example, although it is known that particular rodent species are critical hosts of B. burgdorferi, the causative agent of Lyme disease, it is unknown how the environment affects traits that influence disease risk. This research project will leverage the continental scale of the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) to quantify behavioral and immunological traits of two keystone rodent hosts for B. burgdorferi, a pathogen that affects over 300,000 people in the U.S. each year. This project tests the hypothesis that variation in the environment couples and decouples individual host traits, altering the abundance of competent hosts and driving the emergence of disease hot and cold spots. This project will quantify B. burgdorferi competence in two rodent species across 8 NEON sites over 3 years, and use statistical modeling to link individual variation in infection susceptibility to variation in the abiotic and biotic environment and hence variation in Lyme disease risk. The utility of this approach will be evaluated by using these models to forecast disease prevalence as a function of current climatic and habitat conditions at additional NEON sites in future years. Ultimately, the project will identify how organism-environment interactions drive the susceptibility of individual hosts to infection, and will also identify the level(s) of biological organization (e.g., individuals, populations, species) at which small changes have large consequences for increased disease risk.
This award was co-funded by the Symbiosis, Infection and Immunity Program in the Division of Integrative Organismal Systems and the Macrosystems Biology and NEON Enabled Science Program in the Division of Environmental Biology.
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.
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