NSF Award
2421958
Many animals, including many songbirds, thrive in altered environments such as cities because they modify their behavior. All changes in behavior have to be regulated by the brain, but we do not understand all the cellular and neural mechanisms that allow some species to cope with environmental changes such as urbanization. Two scientific advances can be applied to identifying changes in the brains of wild songbirds living in cities to understand how they cope with novel urban environments. First, ‘brain transcriptomics’ now allows us to measure the amounts of messenger RNA, the gene signals within cells that are converted into brain chemicals, and register the levels of every gene signal within the brain. Comparing these brain gene signatures between birds from urban and rural habitats will identify brain signaling pathways that differ with changed environments. Second, advances in gene manipulation tools make it possible to temporarily block specific gene signals and determine how behavior changes. Blocking signals and showing a change in behavior is critical to identifying the key gene signatures that allow wild birds to cope with altered habitats. Combining these tools from neuroscience with research on urbanization will resolve the gene, cellular, and neural mechanisms that allow some wild songbirds to cope with urbanization. Understanding these foundational biological responses will help us understand how these environmental changes impact other animals, including humans. Research findings will be disseminated through talks at Birder’s Clubs in three states, participation in the annual science festivals and Emory Brain Awareness week events.<br/><br/>Human-induced rapid environmental change threatens biodiversity and especially impacts songbirds. While some species are in decline because of human impacts on the environment, other species have traits that allow them to cope with rapidly changing conditions. For example, wild animals living in urban habitats are reliably bolder and more aggressive than individuals living in less disturbed habitats. Despite concerns about the impacts of anthropogenic change on wildlife, we do not yet understand many of the neural and molecular mechanisms that underlie species' behavioral responses to environmental change. Recent advances in brain transcriptomics present an opportunity to describe the contribution of networks of genes, and thus interacting neural and endocrine processes, to the behavioral responses of free-living, wild animals to rapid anthropogenic change. However, resolving the causal role of specific genes to behavioral outcomes requires manipulating genes identified in such comparisons. Oligonucleotides are gene manipulation tools that could be used in freely behaving (non-model system) animals to reduce gene expression and determine how specific genes contribute to behavioral shifts. This work leverages differences in aggression between urban and rural male song sparrows to (1) characterize differences in brain gene networks associated with behavioral adjustments in urban male birds and (2) resolve the causal contribution of identified differences in gene expression on behavior using gene manipulation tools. Collectively this work will advance our understanding of the mechanisms that permit behavioral adjustments to urbanization and apply powerful tools from neuroscience to field studies of animal behavior.<br/><br/>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.
