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let your representatives know this is especially important because the us constitution gives congress the power of the purse to determine spending levels in practice the white house is using a strategy called impoundment control which i am told is illegal though i am not an expert on this point in which they simply drag their feet on actually spending allocated funds congress needs to know of specific examples of impoundment and the harm it causes if they are to pursue protecting their constitutional role in government 5 ghost write your congressional representative has a small staff of mostly 20 year olds very few of whom have any scientific training those aides don t have the expertise nor the time to provide their boss with detailed text that can be used to move forward legislation on science topics but you do we were told by an aide to elizabeth warren that we are welcome to provide ghost written documents that the senator could use for example within the senate and within the house there are dear colleague letters that express a representative s intent to support funding for a particular item in the budget at a particular amount for instance there is currently a dear colleague letter within the house of representatives written by representatives neguse and fitzpatrick calling for 9 9 billion in funding for nsf that s a shade more than the last budget though less than the chips and science act of 2023 11 96 billion and is probably our best case scenario these ddear colleague letters get signed by other reps as a way of gauging the level of support for a topic before a vote these are an important tool for selecting subjects to legislate and fund and building political consensus what surprised me was that warren s aide said they are willing to see drafts of dear colleague letters written by us their constituents which they might then use in a congressional office that is thin on science expertise and short on time this can be a powerful tool for moving forward congressional action on a topic you care about similarly we constituents can ghost write oversight letters which congressfolk can send to federal agencies asking for information and explanations finally when there is an upcoming congressional hearing on a topic your senator or representative has a chance to ask hard questions of people like nsf or nih directors doge staff or whoever is being grilled that day you can submit questions that you would like your representative to ask during these hearings of people who are testifying or questions they might pose to their fellow representatives these are grim times for science to be sure us federal funding of science has been a cornerstone of nearly a century of global scientific leadership and economic growth that leadership is quickly being squandered and once lost may not be regained for example germany never recovered the global scientific leadership it had before world war 2 though now many us scientists are looking wistfully across the atlantic but let s not cede the field uncontested you have allies in congress and in government you simply need to give them the information and support that they need to be effective at achieving our common goals that requires time and effort from you but what better use of your time could there be at this juncture in history example story 1 35 of deaths involve tissue damage called fibrosis this is a build up of scar tissue in or around organs such as lungs heart or liver i didn t set out to study fibrosis i began as an evolutionary biologist studying how fish split into new species while pursuing nsf funded research about evolution of fish in small coastal lakes we stumbled on something unexpected fish in some lakes experience severe fibrosis fusing together all their organs in other lakes the same fish species shows no fibrosis at all or can recover from prior fibrosis whereas in humans the disease is irreversible today my nih funded research team uses this same small fish to study the genetics and cellular causes of fibrosis hoping to discover tools to prevent or reverse this pervasive immune disease this is an example of how nsf funding for discovery oriented research driven by mere curiosity can yield benefits that may launch new therapies and ultimately improve human well being the combination of federal investment in discovery oriented research at nsf and applied research at nih is a powerful combination that drives innovation for long term economic growth in the us and to improve health and well being of your constituents example story 2 funding science at nsf benefits your constituents and the nation i ll use my own team as an example in 2 decades as a professor i ve brought my university xx million in funding from nsf nih and private foundations that money generates new knowledge for instance i study evolutionary biology but this led me to research on an immune pathology contributing to millions of deaths in the us but the funds have a much wider impact we buy research supplies from local businesses and equipment from start ups my lab alone has employed over 250 people students postdocs technicians whose income contribute to the local economy and the skills they learn in the process contributes to the ct workforce my students have become statisticians doctors brewers epidemiologists k 12 stem teachers and start up owners example story 3 let me give you an example of how nsf funding for discovery focused science has benefitted your constituency my student moved to ct where she won a prestigious nsf graduate research fellowship to study evolutionary biology this fellowship gave her freedom to explore different research directions and she eventually started research on yeasts that live on apples in nearby orchards in the process of studying how yeasts evolve to attack particular apple varieties she unexpectedly found a poorly known species of yeast in the lab she bred it for cider production creating a new commercial product we are bringing to market with longview cider house at rodgers orchards in new britain nsf support for her salary which she spent living in your district made it possible for her to help a family farm and a start up company in your district nsf grants and fellowships can often have this kind of unanticipated benefit and contribute to economic growth and prosperity a recent study by the macroeconomic policy institute confirms what we have long known that public funding of science has large economic benefits conversely they found that a 25 percent cut to public r d spending would reduce gdp by an amount comparable to the decline in gdp during the great recession nsf is facing the possibility of 55 budget cuts nih faces 45 cuts this year nsf awarded only half as many graduate research fellowships postdoc fellowships are getting cut grants are being revoked arbitrarily we need your support for maintaining and growing science funding for the good of your constituents prosperity health quality of life and yes education and new knowledge by dan bolnick may 02 2025 2 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest saturday march 23 2024 a 25 year quest for the holy grail of evolutionary biology when i started my postdoc in 1998 i think it is safe to say that the holy grail or maybe rosetta stone for many evolutionary biologists was a concept called the adaptive landscape the reason for such exalted status is that the adaptive landscape was then and remains the only formal quantitative way to predict and interpret an adaptive radiation of few organisms into many i was heavily indoctrinated into this framework as my postdoc was at ubc during precisely the time when dolph schluter was writing his now classic book the ecology of adaptive radiation adaptive landscapes come in several forms e g genotype based allele frequency based phenotype based and the one we are concerned with here is the phenotypic adaptive landscape perhaps the first serious description of this landscape was the one presented by george gaylord simpson in his 1953 book the major features of evolution in essence simpson s landscape depicts phenotype combinations e g population average values for two important traits such as beak size and beak shape for birds and the expected fitness associated with a population having those mean values the resulting landscapes are expected to be rugged with various peaks of high fitness separated by valleys of low fitness the idea is that a lineage e g of birds is expected to diversify phenotypically into multiple species that each occupy one of those different high fitness peaks with few individuals having phenotypes in the low fitness combinations between the peaks from one species thus comes many in a predictable way by different species matching their traits to particular resources or habitats that represent high fitness peaks on the adaptive landscape this adaptive landscape idea remained largely conceptual or heuristic until lande 1976 1979 figured out how to represent it mathematically then a bit later lande and arnold 1983 showed how to link the adaptive landscape to formal estimates of natural selection at the phenotypic level thus providing a means for formally estimate the landscape this theoretical work spurred several decades of intense interest in attempting to quantify adaptive landscapes or parts of them for particular adaptive radiations yet the effort required turned out to be rather extreme for several reasons most critically perhaps the full landscape can be specified only if one knows the fitness of individuals across the entire range of phenotypic space e g from small beaks to large beaks for every possible beak shape value from pointy to blunt yet almost by definition individuals with phenotypes of low fitness should be rare in nature because they are constantly selected against and so the fitness of phenotypes between species tend to be unknown in nature the holy grail owing to this problem of missing phenotypes as well as other difficulties i would argue that no formal adaptive landscape in the lande sense existed for any natural radiation of organisms at the time i started my postdoc yet its predictive promise made it the holy grail of the time although no adaptive landscapes had been formally estimated some studies got part way there see the appendix below on other landscapes i have known and loved as one example benkman 2003 measured the performance of crossbills on different types of conifer cones and used these estimates and other information to construct an individual fitness landscape spanning the range of phenotypes that is the expected fitness of an individual having each possible combination of beak trait values as had been predicted the landscape had peaks of high fitness near the average phenotypes of the different crossbill types and those peaks were separated by phenotypes with low fitness yet something was missing this figure is from my 2017 book in particular a formal adaptive landscape relates mean phenotypes for a population assuming a particular phenotypic variance to the expected mean fitness of that population which requires a particular conversion as the gif below made by marc olivier beausoleil illustrates when this conversion takes place the fitness peaks tend to sink and the fitness valleys tend to rise because the adaptive landscape averages fitness across all of the phenotypes in a population which inevitably span a range of fitnesses on either side of a peak or valley that is because a population adapted to a fitness peak will have some variation in phenotypes the off peak individuals will reduce mean population fitness relative to a population where all individuals were identical and had phenotypes exactly on the peak the inevitable is that adaptive landscapes based on population means are always smoother than those based on individual fitness values as an example the individual fitness peaks for crossbills shown above tend to disappear if converted to a formal adaptive landscape based on population means c benkman pers comm so as time went on a formal adaptive landscape for an adaptive radiation in nature remained elusive my galapagos dreams in 2002 i had the opportunity to visit galapagos at the behest of jeff podos umass amherst who had just received an nsf career grant that could fund my participation i was really excited and read all of the classic books by lack 1947 bowman 1961 and grant 1998 yet i still had no real practical experience with galapagos or even with bird research thus on my first visit i decided to not actually conduct any of my own research but rather learn about the system both by helping jeff with his research and also simply walking around in the field making natural history observations that might motivate future experiments a highlight from that year was the afternoon i spent in the field with the deacons of all things finch peter and rosemary grant one of the major efforts of jeff s team was to capture finches at a focal site el garrapatero measure their beak traits band them and then relate those traits to song features and mating within a year i had encouraged an increasing emphasis on using the banded birds to track inter annual survival when it was clear that this effort would be productive i set the goal of once and for all estimating the adaptive landscape in the formal way for darwin s finches at this site my first step in this effort was to use the extremely variable population of geospiza fortis the medium ground finch at el garrapatero to measure selection across their phenotypic distribution this population had long been suggested to be bimodal in its beak size distribution with somewhat distinct large and small beak morphs my idea was that the fitness landscape should show a valley between the two morphs such that intermediate birds have lower fitness a selective function called disruptive selection using two years of data low and behold disruptive selection between the beak modes and stabilizing selection around each mode is what we found this initial discovery was exhilarating but 1 we had only two years of data 2 we had a potentially imprecise measure of fitness survival over one year and 3 we were looking at only one species this figure is from my 2017 book it took another 10 years of accumulated data contributed by many team members and collaborators working at el garrapatero to solve the first of those problems in particular marc olivier beausoleil graduate student of rowan barrett at mcgill was able to compile years of the most intensive data collection for g fortis to show that yes disruptive selection was always working to maintain some separation of the two morphs large and small and that the intensity of this selection could be explained by weather conditions specifically disruptive selection was strongest when dry periods followed wet periods probably because many fledglings were produced during wet periods which then i...