The geographic mosaic of coevolving plant-insect lineages

共同进化的植物-昆虫谱系的地理镶嵌

• 批准号: 0839853
• 负责人: John Thompson
• 金额: $ 62万
• 依托单位: University of California-Santa Cruz
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-03-01 至 2015-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0839853&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: geographic; mosaic; coevolving; plant; insect; geographic; mosaic; coevolving; plant; insect

This project will analyze how coevolution between plants and insects shapes the web of interactions among species in contrasting ecosystems. This project will address one of the current major challenges in biology, which is how and why the same groups of species interact in different ways in different ecosystems. The specific goal is to understand how groups of interacting species diverge genetically and ecologically as they coevolve and expand their geographic ranges into new environments. The study will use interactions between a group of common plant species in western North America and a group of insect species that are the major herbivores and pollinators of those plants. DNA sequencing and related molecular methods will be used to evaluate how populations of these interacting species are genetically connected across ecosystems. The second part of the work will combine field observations of the use of flowers by the different insect species with measurements of floral morphology to assess whether the traits of these interacting plants and animals differ geographically. This will provide a test of the geographic mosaic theory of coevolution, which predicts that the strength of matching of floral trait to insect species varies with the presence of competing species of both the plant and insect. The third part of the work will use laboratory experiments to quantify the mechanisms by which natural selection shapes floral traits differently in the different ecosystems.Collectively, these genetic and ecological studies will contribute to a broader understanding of how the web of life is organized spatially across ecosystems, and whether there are predictable patterns in how networks of interacting species change under different environmental conditions. A deeper understanding of the organization of species networks is crucial to predicting the consequences of climate change, and to conserving and restoring the biological integrity of ecosystems. This award will also support the training of graduate and undergraduate students and a postdoctoral fellow in interdisciplinary research at the interface of ecology and evolution.

该项目将分析植物和昆虫之间的共同进化如何塑造物种之间在对比的生态系统中的相互作用网络。 该项目将解决生物学当前的主要挑战之一，这就是为什么相同的物种在不同生态系统中以不同方式相互作用的方式和原因。 具体的目标是了解相互作用物种的群体如何在遗传和生态上分歧，因为它们在地理范围内融合并扩展到新环境中。 该研究将使用北美西部一组普通植物物种与这些植物的主要草食动物和传粉媒介之间的相互作用。 DNA测序和相关的分子方法将用于评估这些相互作用物种的种群如何在生态系统中遗传联系。 这项工作的第二部分将结合不同昆虫物种对花朵使用的田间观察，并测量花卉形态的测量，以评估这些相互作用的植物和动物的特征在地理上是否有所不同。 这将对共同进化的地理镶嵌理论进行测试，该理论预测，花卉性状与昆虫物种的匹配强度随植物和昆虫的竞争物种的存在而变化。 工作的第三部分将使用实验室实验来量化自然选择在不同的生态系统中塑造花卉特征不同的机制。进行填充，这些遗传和生态学研究将有助于对生命网络在生态系统中如何在生态系统中如何组织的网络在跨生态系统中进行更广泛的理解，以及在互动互动中是否有可预测的模式在互动互动的情况下是否有不同的环境变化。对物种网络组织的更深入了解对于预测气候变化的后果以及保护和恢复生态系统的生物完整性至关重要。 该奖项还将支持研究生和本科生的培训，以及生态和进化界面跨学科研究的博士后研究员。