biology · environment · agriculture · ocean · family: the model was never trained on this
will they adapt or collapse, nobody knows
We cannot predict whether organisms will adapt or collapse under climate change
Problem statement
Rapid environmental changes create unprecedented challenges for nearly all life on Earth, and the ORCC solicitation's stated goal is to improve our ability to predict the adaptive versus maladaptive responses of organisms to changing climates. We lack understanding of the mechanistic underpinnings of how organisms respond — at the molecular, physiological, developmental, neural, and behavioral levels — to changing and novel climate conditions. A critical missing piece is the role of microorganisms: the dynamic dialogue across the host-microorganism continuum, which may regulate organismal resilience across both lifespan and landscape scales, is what the partnership seeks to query, amid what the solicitation calls significant knowledge gaps in our understanding of the molecular drivers and dynamics of microbial resilience to environmental change.
Why this matters
Studies over the last several decades have documented changes in the distribution, phenology, abundance, and extinction rates of natural populations and species in response to changing climate. Organismal responses can be adaptive or maladaptive, and the solicitation aims to improve our ability to anticipate which; conservation is among the societal challenges it names. The yield of domesticated crops and animals and the incidence and severity of pathogen outbreaks are also affected, with consequences the solicitation describes as already having major impacts on the US bio-economy and the world's food security. The microbiome dimension adds a potential intervention lever — if we understood how microbial partners modulate host resilience, we might manipulate target microorganisms or microbiomes for increased resilience.
What’s been tried and why it hasn’t worked
Most climate change studies to date, in the solicitation's own diagnosis, have lacked integration between investigations of organismal mechanisms of response and eco-evolutionary approaches. Studies over several decades have documented changes in distribution, phenology, abundance, and extinction rates; other studies have identified physiological and genetic mechanisms underlying organismal response to environmental stressors, but not always in the context of climate change. The solicitation asks proposals to integrate organismal mechanisms with eco-evolutionary approaches so that findings are generalizable across temporal, geographic, and/or biological scales and to systems beyond the organisms under study. Understanding of the molecular drivers and dynamics of microbial resilience remains insufficient — the MMORCC track asks for the physiological and molecular mechanisms underlying phenomenological observations. Integrating physiology and genomics into the next generation of species distribution models is named as an area of emphasis.
What would unlock progress
Integrative, cross-disciplinary research combining genetic, genomic, physiological, developmental, neural, and behavioral mechanisms with eco-evolutionary approaches. Systems-level understanding of microorganism resilience and the host-microorganism continuum under climate stress. Predictive frameworks translating basic research into practical tools for climate adaptation — understanding the adaptive and plastic capacity of species and predicting and mitigating maladaptive responses. Understanding how microbe-mediated resilience can be leveraged for practical solutions for mitigation and adaptation to climate change.
Entry points for student teams
A student team could conduct a common-garden experiment comparing physiological stress responses (heat shock protein expression, metabolic rates, survival) across populations of a local species collected from sites with different climate histories, testing whether populations from warmer sites show pre-adaptation. Alternatively, a team could characterize the microbiome of heat-tolerant vs. heat-sensitive individuals within a single species using 16S sequencing, testing whether microbial composition predicts host thermal tolerance. Relevant skills: ecology, physiology, genomics, microbiology, experimental design.
Genes
Structural cousins: stuck the same way, in other fields
Sources
"ORCC: Organismal Response to Climate Change," NSF 25-504; "MMORCC: Microorganism-Mediated Organismal Resilience to Climate Change," NSF DCL 25-014; Partnership with the Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group and the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. (accessed 2026-02-15); DCL at (accessed 2026-09-30). go to source 1 ↗ go to source 2 ↗
Working notes
Notes made while writing and checking this brief, shown as written. They use working shorthand.
- The partnership with the Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group and the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation adds an anticipated $5,000,000 from the Family Foundation, solely for the MMORCC track, on top of a minimum of $10,000,000 of NSF funds anticipated for FY2025 ($15,000,000 in all, 15 to 20 awards, pending availability of funds). The Frontiers Group recommends funding; the Family Foundation invests it.
- MMORCC specifically targets the microorganism-mediated resilience dimension — a track added in this revision of the solicitation for FY2025, whose stated goal is practical solutions for mitigation and adaptation to climate change.
- Cross-domain connection: shares structure with `neuro-environmental-adaptation` (which focuses specifically on neural mechanisms) and `bio-genotype-phenotype-prediction-gap` (predicting organismal climate response requires genotype-to-phenotype understanding in environmental context). This brief addresses the broader organismal response, while `neuro-environmental-adaptation` addresses the neural subsystem.
- The `failure:disciplinary-silo` tag is central — the ORCC solicitation states that most climate change studies to date have lacked integration between investigations of organismal mechanisms of response and eco-evolutionary approaches.
- The `temporal:window` tag applies because climate change is ongoing — understanding adaptive mechanisms has a closing window of relevance for conservation intervention.
Reconciliation 2026-09-30: Fact repair after reading the whole write-up against both sources it names, with a second reader going over the repairs the same day. Both sources were fetched on 2026-09-30 directly from nsf.gov and read in full: the ORCC solicitation NSF 25-504 (the link above now resolves to https://www.nsf.gov/funding/opportunities/orcc-organismal-response-climate-change/505963/nsf25-504/solicitation; posted October 22, 2024, replaces NSF 23-622) and the MMORCC Dear Colleague Letter NSF 25-014 (https://www.nsf.gov/funding/opportunities/dcl-microorganism-mediated-organismal-resilience-climate-change/nsf25-014, dated October 28, 2024). (1) The Source Notes said the Allen Frontiers Group partnership was "$16M+". The solicitation anticipates $15,000,000 in all: a minimum of $10,000,000 of NSF funds for FY2025 plus an additional $5,000,000 from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation solely for the MMORCC track, pending availability of funds, for 15 to 20 awards; the Frontiers Group recommends funding and the Family Foundation invests it. The note now says that. (2) Removed, because neither source contains them: that climate change is driving the sixth mass extinction with species loss rates 100–1,000x the background rate; that coral bleaching has killed about 50% of Great Barrier Reef corals and some genotypes survive; that conservation triage is nearly impossible; crop and livestock responses to heat stress and drought; "ocean acidification", "altered precipitation patterns" and "extreme events" as the stressors; "structural" mechanisms; "ecosystem restoration"; and that the host-microorganism dialogue is poorly characterized "for most species". In their place the text uses what the solicitation says: documented changes in distribution, phenology, abundance and rates of extinction; the yield of domesticated crops and animals and the incidence and severity of pathogen outbreaks; "changing and novel climate conditions"; practical solutions for mitigation and adaptation to climate change; and, for the host-microorganism dialogue, that the partnership seeks to query it amid what the solicitation calls "significant knowledge gaps in our understanding of the molecular drivers and dynamics of microbial resilience to environmental change" (the DCL does not use the knowledge-gap phrase; the solicitation does, twice). (3) Softened to the strength the source gives: "we cannot predict" the adaptive versus maladaptive responses is now the solicitation's stated goal, to "improve our ability to predict organismal responses to changing climates" and to "anticipate adaptive and maladaptive organismal responses" (the second reader took out an interim "is limited", which the solicitation does not say); the sentence that outcomes are unevenly distributed ("some species adapt, some migrate, some go extinct") and that we cannot predict which will occur "for a given species" is now that organismal responses can be adaptive or maladaptive and the solicitation aims to improve our ability to anticipate which, with conservation among the societal challenges it names; the claims that the work ran in "two disconnected silos", that the mechanism and ecology communities "use different methods, different model systems, and different conceptual frameworks", that lab studies miss "multi-stressor" field reality, and that population studies "prevent generalization" are replaced by the solicitation's own sentences: most climate change studies to date have lacked integration between investigations of organismal mechanisms of response and eco-evolutionary approaches; studies over several decades have documented changes in distribution, phenology, abundance and rates of extinction; other studies have identified physiological and genetic mechanisms of response to environmental stressors, but not always in the context of climate change; and proposals should integrate the two to be generalizable across scales and to systems beyond the organisms under study (the solicitation never says "lab" or "field" for either kind of work, so neither word is used); "most microbiome studies are correlative rather than mechanistic" is now the MMORCC track's request for the physiological and molecular mechanisms underlying phenomenological observations; the claim that species distribution models "predict range shifts but not whether organisms within a range will persist" is now the solicitation's listing of integrating physiology and genomics into the next generation of species distribution models as an area of emphasis; "identifying which species, populations, or genotypes are most at risk" is now the solicitation's understanding the adaptive and plastic capacity of species and predicting and mitigating maladaptive responses; the Source Note that the solicitation identifies the mechanism-vs-ecology divide as "the primary barrier to progress" now gives the solicitation's statement about lacking integration; and the MMORCC note no longer calls it "a newer research frontier" but a track added in this revision for FY2025. (4) The scare-quoted "inoculate" (not in either source) is now the solicitation's manipulation of target microorganisms or microbiomes for increased resilience (its words: "manipulations of target microorganisms or microbiomes for increased resilience or less vulnerability to climate change scenarios"). (5) The Source line now names both partners (the Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group and the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, as both sources do) and carries the DCL's address; the ORCC title and number, the DCL title and number, and the accessed date are unchanged. Confirmed in the sources and left as written: "rapid environmental changes create unprecedented challenges for nearly all life on Earth" (DCL, near-verbatim); the mechanistic-underpinnings framing; the molecular, physiological, developmental, neural and behavioral levels (the RCN text lists genetic, developmental, neural, physiological, behavioral and ecological responses); the host-microorganism continuum regulating resilience across lifespan and landscape scales; "molecular drivers and dynamics of microbial resilience"; systems-level approaches; integrative, cross-disciplinary research; predictive frameworks for use-inspired outcomes; and the solicitation's list of societal challenges (conservation, food security, disease and pest outbreaks, agriculture). Not changed: the long title and display title (they carry no number; their "cannot predict"/"nobody knows" is stronger than the solicitation's "improve our ability to predict", reported for Beth), the student entry points (proposals, not source claims), and the cross-domain and temporal:window notes (editorial). Genome Tags untouched.