biology · environment · health · family: the answer is in a field you’ve never heard of
brainsrewiredbyachangedworld
How nervous systems respond to anthropogenic environmental change is unknown
Problem statement
Anthropogenic stressors — noise pollution, ocean acidification, chemical pollution, temperature fluctuation, and other human-generated perturbations — are altering the environments in which organisms live, and NSF and The Kavli Foundation describe an unmet need for basic research on the neurobiological mechanisms by which nervous systems perceive, respond to, and adapt to these stressors at the molecular, biophysical, cellular, and circuit levels. The nervous system serves as an interface between an organism and its environment, and the original letter says that studying it in environments in flux requires combining multidisciplinary expertise: neuroscientists working with environmental scientists, molecular biologists, animal behaviorists, marine biologists, ecologists, and climate scientists. The call asks each proposal to show how its results would inform or predict resilience in related neural mechanisms, organisms, or environments.
Why this matters
The source letters say these anthropogenic stressors pose severe threats to organisms, thereby affecting biodiversity and ecosystem services, and call understanding the neurobiological mechanisms behind neural, physiological, and behavioral responses to anthropogenic environmental change "of vital importance." The letters ask proposals to address the importance, extent, or urgency of the environmental change being studied, and the relationship between the neural mechanisms under investigation and the organism's fitness in the changing environment. They set human health outcomes, ecological impacts, and sustainability applications aside as critical but funded elsewhere.
What’s been tried and why it hasn’t worked
The source letters give little history. What they say is that environmental sustainability applications, ecological impacts, and human health outcomes are "being addressed through other funding mechanisms," while fundamental basic research using cell- and circuit-based approaches is the "unmet need" the call exists to fill. They do not describe earlier attempts or say why those fell short. The call ran in two windows: the first letter (NSF 24-044, December 26, 2023) invited proposals through September 30, 2024; its replacement (NSF 24-121, August 29, 2024) ran through February 10, 2025; both are now marked archived on the NSF site.
What would unlock progress
The letters point to interdisciplinary collaborations that integrate diverse methods — environmental monitoring techniques, behavioral and physiological experiments, and ecological and evolutionary modeling — with traditional approaches in neuroscience, aimed at the modulatory, homeostatic, adaptive, and evolutionary mechanisms that affect neurophysiology under anthropogenic influence. Proposals focused solely on tool development were not permitted under this call.
Entry points for student teams
A student team could run a comparative reanalysis of neural gene expression responses to a specific environmental stressor across 2-3 related species with different ecological tolerances, using the public transcriptomic record rather than new wet-lab work: NCBI GEO holds downloadable expression datasets from non-model species under environmental stress — e.g., GSE38458 and GSE38456 (largemouth bass whole brain from Florida rivers with high versus lower methylmercury, and hypothalamus after laboratory mercury injection; microarray), and GSE163876 (olive flounder under acute and chronic heat stress; RNA-seq of gill, liver, and muscle, not brain) — and the cross-species synthesis — not new sequencing — is the semester-scale contribution. A team would need to search GEO further for neural-tissue datasets in additional species. Generating fresh cross-species data would require animal husbandry, IACUC approval, and sequencing budgets that outrun a semester. Alternatively, a team could build a low-cost, long-duration environmental monitoring setup paired with behavioral tracking (computer vision) for a local species, generating a dataset correlating environmental variables with behavioral outputs as a foundation for neuroecological analysis.
Genes
Structural cousins: stuck the same way, in other fields
Sources
"Neurobiology in Changing Ecosystems (NiCE)," NSF BIO Directorate DCL, NSF 24-044 and NSF 24-121, in partnership with The Kavli Foundation. (accessed 2026-02-10). go to source ↗
Working notes
Notes made while writing and checking this brief, shown as written. They use working shorthand.
- The NiCE program is co-funded by The Kavli Foundation: funded awards split their budget between NSF and the foundation, and NSF manages review in consultation with it.
- NSF 24-121 replaced the original DCL (NSF 24-044) and moved the submission window from September 30, 2024 to February 10, 2025.
- Cross-domain connection: this brief shares structure with the evolution innovations brief (both involve understanding biological mechanisms that could inform engineering and conservation) and with the chemical sensor problem (environmental sensing is central to both).
- The "not-attempted" failure tag is notable — this is genuinely a gap between disciplines rather than a failed technical approach. The tools and knowledge exist in neuroscience and ecology separately; the failure is in integration.
- Possible study systems (this write-up's own suggestion; the letters name none): coral reef organisms (facing ocean acidification and warming), urban bird populations (facing noise pollution), and pollinator species (facing chemical pollution).
Reconciliation 2026-08-21: Entry-point repair per the C37 realism triage (verification/ENTRY-POINT-REALISM-TRIAGE-2026-08-21.md). Triage flag confirmed: conducting a cross-species neural gene expression study on non-model organisms was called "feasible in a semester with basic molecular biology facilities," but it in fact requires species husbandry, IACUC-approved stressor exposure, and $10-20k of sequencing plus de novo transcriptome assembly. Replaced the run-the-study framing with a reanalysis of public neurogenomic datasets across species differing in ecological tolerance; the behavioral-tracking/environmental-monitoring door was sound and stays untouched. Verified: NCBI GEO holds publicly downloadable brain/neural transcriptomes under thermal stress in non-model species, e.g. GSE163876 (olive flounder acute and chronic heat stress, 24 samples; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gds/?term=heat+stress+brain+transcriptome+fish), with raw reads via the linked SRA Run Selector.
Reconciliation 2026-10-01: Fact repair after reading the whole write-up against every source it names. Read in full on 2026-10-01: both NSF Dear Colleague Letters, NSF 24-121 (the Source link, which now redirects to https://www.nsf.gov/funding/opportunities/dcl-neurobiology-changing-ecosystems-nice/nsf24-121) and NSF 24-044 (https://www.nsf.gov/funding/opportunities/dcl-neurobiology-changing-ecosystems-nice/nsf24-044); the GEO search page linked in the note above; and the GEO records for GSE163876, GSE38458 and GSE38456, with their sample lists (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/acc.cgi?acc=GSE163876). The letters are short funding calls of about six paragraphs each, and most of the body text was not in them. (1) "Light pollution" was listed among the stressors; the letters name noise pollution, ocean acidification, chemical pollution and temperature fluctuation. It was removed here and from the study-systems note. (2) "We do not understand the neurobiological mechanisms" and "neurobiology and ecology have developed largely in isolation" are not in the letters, which speak of an "unmet need" for basic cell- and circuit-level research and say multidisciplinary expertise is essential; the paragraph now says that. "The primary interface" became "an interface," the letters' wording. (3) The claims that we cannot predict which species will be resilient, and that this makes it impossible to anticipate biodiversity collapse or design conservation interventions, are not in the letters; the sentence now gives the letters' third review criterion. (4) Removed from Why This Matters because the letters do not contain them: "unprecedented biodiversity loss"; conservation strategies; honey bees, temperature and daylength cues and food security; ecosystem services worth "trillions of dollars"; and the human-health sentence. The letters in fact set human health outcomes aside as funded elsewhere. The section now gives what the letters say: severe threats to organisms, affecting biodiversity and ecosystem services. (5) The What's Been Tried paragraph (ecological studies rarely identifying neural mechanisms; laboratory model organisms; "essentially no body of work"; missing molecular tools for non-model species) is not in the letters, which give no history. It now reports the one thing they say on the point, that applied, ecological-impact and health work is funded elsewhere and basic cell and circuit research is the unmet need, plus the dates of the two letters. (6) The four items under What Would Unlock Progress (field-ready molecular and imaging tools, comparative neurogenomics, linking computational models, long-term neural monitoring) are not in the letters, and the letters exclude proposals solely about tool development. The section now lists the methods the letters name. (7) The entry point said GEO holds brain RNA-seq datasets under thermal stress, with GSE163876 as the example. The GEO record lists that dataset's 24 samples as gill, liver and muscle, eight each, and none from brain; the note of 2026-08-21 above is mistaken on this point. The same search page lists two brain datasets, GSE38458 (24 whole-brain samples from largemouth bass in Florida rivers, methylmercury) and GSE38456 (14 hypothalamus samples, laboratory mercury injection), both public microarray sets. The entry point now names all three for what they are and says more searching is needed. (8) In the notes above, "indicating strong community interest and response" and "signaling that this gap is recognized by both public and private research funders" are not in the letters and were replaced with what the pages show; the study systems are now marked as this write-up's own suggestion. Confirmed in the sources and left as written: the Source line (title, NSF 24-044 and NSF 24-121, BIO Directorate, The Kavli Foundation); the four named stressors; the molecular, cellular and circuit levels; all three GEO datasets are public and downloadable. Could not be checked against any source, and left as written because they are the write-up's own judgment and not source claims: that fresh cross-species data would need animal husbandry, IACUC approval and sequencing budgets beyond a semester; the second entry point; and the two notes about tags and neighbouring briefs. No title changed, but the long title's "Is Unknown" is stronger than the letters, which say "unmet need"; this is reported for Beth and not changed. Genome tags untouched. A second reader went over these repairs on the same day, fetched the two letters, the GEO search page and the three GEO records again, confirmed every change above against them, and reworded two phrases so the text says no more than the sources: "the call itself was a short one" became "the call ran in two windows" (the pages give dates, not a judgment of length), and the GSE38458 description now says "Florida rivers with high versus lower methylmercury," since the record's 24 whole-brain samples come from one high-mercury river and two lower-mercury rivers.