Biological Sciences faculty Drs. Jeff Lozier and Janna Fierst were recently awarded a National Science Foundation Rules of Life grant entitled “Bumble bee cold tolerance across elevations – From epigenotype to phenotype across space, time, and levels of biological organization” (https://nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1921585&HistoricalAwards=false).  The project is a collaboration with faculty at University of Wyoming and Ohio State University, with a total budget of ~$2.5 million. This project will focus on bumble bees in mountains of the western US to examine how organisms adapt to cold temperature extremes by looking at evidence from genome variation through to variation in the physiology of thermal tolerance limits. In particular the study will examine bees from different environments, social castes, and generations to investigate how DNA sequence variation and “epigenetic” variation (non-sequence-based DNA changes) influence physiology via alterations in gene expression and metabolomic composition. The project will support at least two PhD students and a postdoctoral researcher at UA.