The Division of Environmental Biology (DEB) Core Tracksupports research and training on evolutionary and ecological processes acting at the level of populations, species, communities, and ecosystems.

DEB encourages research that elucidates fundamental principles that identify and explain the

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unity and diversity of life and its interactions with the environment over space and time.

Research may incorporate field, laboratory, or collection-based approaches; observational or manipulative studies; synthesis activities; phylogenetic discovery projects; or theoretical approaches involving analytical, statistical, or computational modeling.

Proposals should be submitted to the core clusters (Ecosystem Sciences, Evolutionary Processes, Population and Community Ecology, and Systematics and Biodiversity Sciences).

DEB also encourages interdisciplinary proposals that cross conceptual boundaries and integrate over levels of biological organization or across multiple spatial and temporal scales.Research addressing ecology and ecosystem science in the marine biome should be directed to the Biological Oceanography Program in the Division of Ocean Sciences; research addressing evolution and systematics in the marine biome should be directed to the Evolutionary Processes or Systematics and Biodiversity Science programs in DEB.

All DEB programs also encourage proposals that leverage NSF-supported data networks, databases, centers, and other forms of scientific infrastructure, including but not limited to the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), Environmental Data Initiative (EDI), and Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio).

The Rules of Life Track supports integrative proposals that span population, species, community and ecosystem scales normally funded by DEB, to organismal, cellular and molecular scales typically funded by other divisions in the Biological Sciences.

Discovery of fundamental principles and enabling infrastructure will advance understanding and further predict how key properties of living systems emerge from the interaction of genomes, phenotypes, and environment acting over space and time.

This track provides opportunities to advance understanding of the Rules of Life by new mechanisms for review and funding of proposals that span two or more divisions in the Biological Sciences Directorate.