The National Science Foundation awarded a two-year, $138,000 Project Grant to support research titled "Parallel Evolution of Lizards in Urban Heat Islands: Locomotor Performance, Muscle Physiology, and Gene Regulation." The grant falls under the NSF's Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074), which aims to promote progress in the biological sciences and strengthen the national scientific enterprise through increased knowledge and understanding of major problems confronting the nation....
This two-year, $276,000 National Science Foundation project grant funds research and training through the Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) to uncover the genomic and developmental basis of gliding structure evolution in gecko lizards. The fellowship recipient will characterize patagium development in multiple gecko species to determine if convergently evolved gliding membranes result from convergent or divergent cellular and developmental patterns. Using histology, apoptosis assays,...
This five-year National Science Foundation project grant of $1,153,200 will fund research into the genetic mechanisms underlying the evolution of shoulder girdle bones in vertebrates transitioning from fish to tetrapods. Led by Rutgers, The State University under the Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074), the award aims to identify the roles of GLI family genes in specifying the two types of bones - intramembranous and endochondral - found in vertebrates. The research focuses on the pectoral...
This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) provides $502,981 to Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT to develop and use a low-cost legged robot platform to systematically study the evolution of foot morphology in lizards. The research aims to understand how the physical properties of diverse ground substrates, such as soil, leaf litter, sand, and snow, impact the dynamics of animal locomotion. The project will combine discrete...
This three-year Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Biological Infrastructure division will fund $240,000 to support research investigating the effects of polyploidy on developmental and morphological evolution in salamanders. The fellowship awarded under the Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) will enable the grantee to study unique polyploid salamander lineages to better understand how whole genome duplications shape development and phenotype across organ systems....
The National Science Foundation Division of Integrative Organismal Systems awarded a $276,018 Project Grant to The George Washington University from January 15, 2022 to December 31, 2024. The grant supports collaborative research between U.S. and U.K. researchers on "The Amphibian Skin Microbial-Immune Interface and Its Impact on Infection Outcome." This project aligns with the NSF Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074), which aims to advance the fundamental understanding of...
This $769,770 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049) will fund research at Ball State University from September 2022 through August 2025. The research aims to develop rigorous mathematical models describing the coordinated changes in form and function that occur through ontogeny in arboreal lizards. Researchers will conduct biomechanical experiments and morphological analysis on mourning geckos and three additional arboreal...
The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $494,261 Project Grant under the Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) to conduct research on frog skin evolution and adaptations. The project aims to: 1) quantify how frog skin has evolved over the past 200 million years in response to abiotic and biotic factors, 2) experimentally test the ability of anuran skin to decouple respiration and water loss, and 3) incorporate...
This National Science Foundation Project Grant award of $218,472 provides funding from January 1, 2023 through December 31, 2025 to develop molecular tools for exploring mating system diversity in salamanders. The award is made under the Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) to support basic biological research that strengthens the nation's scientific enterprise. Specifically, the Principal Investigator at the University of North Carolina at Asheville will learn and apply RADcap single...
This National Science Foundation (NSF) Biological Sciences (CFDA 47.074) Project Grant award of $750,000.00 will investigate how the central nervous system of vertebrates produces coordinated leg movements. Specifically, the project will use the turtle spinal cord as a model system to pharmacologically perturb inhibitory and excitatory neurotransmitter receptors to understand how the spinal cord generates and selects appropriate motor outputs for swimming, scratching, and leg withdrawal...