This three-year National Science Foundation project grant award of $240,000 will fund research investigating physiological and cellular aging in grey seals. The award is part of the Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074), which supports basic biological research to advance scientific knowledge and address major challenges.
Specifically, the postdoctoral fellow will analyze telomere length dynamics in seals to evaluate the individual quality hypothesis, which posits some individuals show higher reproductive success and survival due to slower cellular aging. Using genetic samples from a well-studied Sable Island seal population, the fellow will estimate telomere erosion rates for seals with known lifetime reproductive histories. They will also examine potential heritability of individual quality and the role of maternal foraging strategies. The fellow will gain skills in telomere assays, mark-recapture modeling, and recruiting undergraduates from underrepresented groups for fieldwork opportunities. Overall, this research aims to link cellular aging metrics to expressed fitness traits at the individual level in a long-lived mammal.
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