NSF PRFB FY 2023: How does urban environmental heterogeneity and societal inequity shape phenotypic traits in wildlife?

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2023, Integrative Research Investigating the Rules of Life Governing Interactions Between Genomes, Environment, and Phenotypes. The fellowship supports research and training of the fellow that will contribute to the area of Rules of Life in innovative ways. This research project will address how variation in urban living conditions, such as pollution and green space availability, affect the behavior and physiology of wildlife across different neighborhoods. In doing so, the results of this project will illustrate how inequities within our society affect the evolution and general wellbeing of other nonhuman organisms in cities. The fellow will conduct research in collaboration with local communities spanning socioeconomic statuses with unequal access to STEM resources. Thus, this project will not only provide an opportunity to directly broaden participation in STEM, but also allow the fellow to serve as an advocate for equitable environmental policies that will benefit both people and animals across urban neighborhoods. In addition, the fellow will provide K-12 educational outreach at museums and underserved schools, and use knowledge of local animal behavior to humanely mitigate conflict between residents and wildlife. To understand how heterogeneity in urban environmental conditions affects wildlife, this research will evaluate and compare the behavior and physiology of raccoons (Procyon lotor) across high and low income neighborhoods in the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as in the surrounding nonurban areas. The fellow will begin by humanely capturing raccoons across neighborhoods in order to mark each individual with a microchip and safely collect blood and hair samples, which will provide insights on raccoon physiology (e.g., stress) and genetic relatedness across neighborhoods. The fellow will receive training on how to process each biological sample and conduct the associated physiological and genetic analyses. After all raccoons have been processed and released, the fellow will work in partnership with local agencies and community members to make behavioral observations of raccoons using trail cameras and evaluate their cognitive abilities using puzzles and other testing apparatuses. Together, this information will enable the fellow to link raccoon behavior and performance across tests to underlying cognitive and physiological mechanisms that may be influenced by urban environmental conditions. The fellow will also evaluate how raccoon behavior may be inherited from parents of offspring, and whether knowledge related to local resources and dangers could be transmitted among raccoons within each neighborhood as well. 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.