Project Grant 2209018

This two-year, $276,000 National Science Foundation project grant funds research investigating genomic and phenotypic contributions to thermal tolerance in European green crabs through an NSF postdoctoral fellowship in biology. The fellowship supports the fellow's integrative research dissecting the rules of life governing interactions between genomes, environment and phenotypes. Specifically, the fellow will pair whole-animal thermal physiology experiments with transcriptomics and metabolomics to disentangle thermal response variation associated with acclimatory plasticity versus adaptive evolution in invasive European green crab populations on the North American west coast. The research aims to quantify individual thermal tolerance variation and create a framework to mechanistically understand plasticity-adaptation interactions influencing thermotolerance. Broader impacts include training undergraduate students from historically excluded groups in ocean sciences research. This award falls under the NSF's Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074), which supports basic biological research to strengthen the nation's scientific enterprise and increase knowledge of major problems confronting the nation.