New Wave Of NSF Awards Underscores Agency's Commitment To Environment

This marks the fourth consecutive year that NSF has committed funding to a wide variety of programs encompassing both basic and applied research that is designed to investigate threats to biological diversity. Such threats, NSF noted in announcing the latest round of grants, occurs across all geographic regions, at all levels of life, and on scales ranging from the microscopic to the oceanic. "We're gradually evolving a broader concept of ecosystems," says Joann Roskoski, acting deputy director for NSF's division of environmental biology. The division usually approves between 15 and 18 projects each year and has so far doled out about $10.5 million since the program began. "If you don't save a whole ecosystem, trying to save an individual species can be a wasted effort," Roskoski says. "You need to save the environment the species lives in. If not, what happens to the ability of that species to survive?" The goal of the grant program is to "advance knowledge of ecosystems and species under pressure," according to NSF. "When we start to take a proactive role in managing things, to conserve or restore, we have to know how to do that, and the problem is we often don't know how," Roskoski says. "If we wanted to cure a disease in our body, we'd need to know something about our bodies. We need to think about the environment in the same way. This program helps us get fundamental information needed to design programs to manage the environment." Consequently, the research does not have to be confined to the United States, although government legislation requires that the funds be given only to domestic institutions, including museums, zoos, universities, nonprofit organizations, and research institutes. This year, the general areas of research funded by the program include assessments of the diversity contained within gene pools of different species, the fate over generations of individual gene variants within species, the effects of species diversity within ecosystems, and hormonal and behavioral factors affecting animal reproduction. Among the research projects selected to receive support are a long-term study of the ecology and reproductive biology of endangered Nicaraguan cichlid fish; an investigation that, according to NSF, is the first long-term interdisciplinary field study of the reproductive biology of the cotton-top tamarin, an endangered Colombian primate; a study of the population structure of the Mexican spotted owl; an investigation of the consequences of seed dispersal by fruit-eating animals on tropical forest regeneration; and a study of the causes of extinction after rainforest fragmentation. "My research wouldn't get finished without this program," says Fred Allendorf, a professor of biology at the University of Montana, Missoula, who was awarded $250,000 to study the conservation and genetics of Pacific salmonids, a family that includes salmon and trout. "I see this [grant] program as connecting the bridge between basic and applied research," Allendorf says. "[It] divides itself between model systems and real-world problems." "I heard of the program at a meeting of the National Society of Zoologists," recalls Adrian Wenner, a professor, emeritus, of biological sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "My work is just too massive an undertaking to have received funding here." Wenner's research looks at the effects that removal of honey bees from Santa Cruz Island--a largely uninhabited, 96-acre tract off the California coast--would have on native plants and their pollinators. Wenner, working in conjunction with two other scientists, received $50,000 from NSF. "We've been working for six years so far and removed 165 of 215 colonies, but we would have stopped altogether without the funding," he says. "It's a pretty big task." Those interested in applying to the program are requested to submit proposals to the Conservation and Restoration Biology Competition at the National Science Foundation, 4201 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, Va. 22230. The deadline is September 29. Edward R. Silverman is a freelance writer based in Millburn, N.J.

New Wave Of NSF Awards Underscores Agency's Commitment To Environment

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