This Project Grant award of $270,000.00 from the National Science Foundation's Biological Sciences (CFDA 47.074) program supports a postdoctoral research fellowship to investigate the integration of behavior and brain gene expression in the bull-headed dung beetle, Onthophagus taurus. The research aims to enhance understanding of how brains, bodies, and behaviors function together by examining how behavior and brain transcriptomic variation change across the beetle's lifetime, how the brain...
This $502,986 project grant from the National Science Foundation Division of Emerging Frontiers will fund research at Austin Peay State University under the Biological Sciences federal grant program (CFDA 47.074) to identify genes in mothers of the burying beetle Nicrophorus orbicollis that cause variation in offspring traits linked to fitness. The research aims to study indirect genetic effects, known as social influences, which are theorized to play important roles in phenotypic evolution...
This National Science Foundation (NSF) Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) Project Grant award of $750,000 from July 15, 2024 to June 30, 2028 will support research conducted by the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) to investigate how an insect's hunger state affects its sense of smell and navigational decision-making. The project aims to enhance understanding of how hunger-related signaling, such as insulin, modulates the activity of key inhibitory neurons in the insect brain to...
This National Science Foundation Project Grant of $138,000 supports research and training in the area of biological sciences from August 1, 2023 to July 31, 2025. The grant funds a postdoctoral fellowship for the study of evolution of innate predator avoidance behavior in flies under the Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074). The fellow will investigate how changes in genes lead to changes in insect responses to smells associated with predators and parasites. Using Drosophila flies as a...
This National Science Foundation (NSF) Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) Project Grant award of $240,000 provides funding for a 3-year postdoctoral research fellowship. The grant supports an investigation into the role of transcriptional plasticity in insect host specialization, focused on two species of pine sawfly. The research aims to identify the genes that allow insects to adapt to changes in their environment, which is important for understanding how organisms survive and adapt...
This $687,357 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) supports research to study repeated evolution in a diverse group of alpine beetles. The researchers will explore whether natural selection has acted on the same molecular pathways as species adapted to alpine environments during past climate cycles. Comparative genomic and stress tolerance experiments will test for evidence of repeated evolution and identify the genetic mechanisms...
This three-year, two hundred forty thousand dollar project grant from the National Science Foundation's Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) will fund research examining the evolution of endocrine and behavioral phenotypes in recently diverged stickleback fish populations. The fellow will compare differences in neural hormone sensitivity, hormone production pathways, and conduct functional genetic tests to uncover how novel parental care behaviors emerge within and between populations...
This National Science Foundation Project Grant award of $240,000 supports research under the Biological Sciences federal grant program (CFDA 47.074) from December 1, 2023 through November 30, 2025. The award funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology to develop a comprehensive mathematical model of multisensory integration inspired by insect brain function. The fellow will leverage tools from nonlinear dynamical systems to model how insects combine distinct sensory cues like...
This National Science Foundation (NSF) project grant, funded under the Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074), supports collaborative research on the mechanisms that regulate co-transmission of multiple neurotransmitters in fruit flies. The $502,569 award to the University of Montana, effective October 1, 2024 through September 30, 2028, will leverage cutting-edge techniques to examine how neurons that co-release glutamate and octopamine are impacted by sexual dimorphism and social isolation....
This National Science Foundation (NSF) Project Grant award of $240,000 under the Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) will fund a postdoctoral fellowship at Raleigh, NC to study the neural control of acoustic duetting in fruit flies. The research aims to investigate how the brain evolves to generate new mating behaviors, such as female flies singing back to males during courtship. The project will leverage the fruit fly as a model organism to understand the neural circuitry that coordinates...