CAREER: Gypsum Endemics of the Chihuahuan Desert: Exploring the origins and diversification of an edaphic flora using comparative phylogenetics and phylogeography

职业：奇瓦瓦沙漠的石膏特有种：利用比较系统发育学和系统发育地理学探索土壤植物区系的起源和多样化

• 批准号: 1054539
• 负责人: Michael Moore
• 金额: $ 51.5万
• 依托单位: Oberlin College
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-02-01 至 2018-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1054539&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Gypsum; Endemics; Chihuahuan; Desert

This project integrates a vigorous research program to understand the evolution of plants restricted to unusual soils with an equally vigorous effort to improve high school and college student understanding of core concepts in evolutionary biology. Plant species that grow only on unusual soils, such as serpentine soils (high concentration of metals), bogs (low pH), or evaporites (high salinity), comprise a substantial proportion of plant biodiversity worldwide, but surprisingly little is known about their evolutionary history. For example, do plant lineages restricted to these unusual soils persist over long periods of evolutionary time? Likewise, how have such lineages responded to past climate changes? This project will answer such questions using a large but poorly studied group of plants that grow only in gypsum-rich soils within the Chihuahuan Desert of the US and Mexico. By generating and analyzing large DNA sequence data sets, the detailed evolutionary histories of 12 diverse gypsum-restricted plant groups in the Chihuahuan Desert will be reconstructed and compared. This international research program represents the first comprehensive effort to understand the origin and evolutionary diversification of a large, soil-restricted group of plant species, and consequently will vastly improve our understanding of how soils influence plant evolution and how soil-restricted plants will respond to ongoing climate change. This project will also provide a novel and engaging framework for improving evolutionary literacy in high school and college students, by employing a combination of high school teacher workshops, innovative undergraduate biology laboratory activities at a liberal arts college, and extensive mentoring of student researchers.

该项目集成了一项有力的研究计划，以了解局限于异常土壤的植物的演变，并同样竭尽全力提高高中和大学生对进化生物学核心概念的理解。 仅在异常土壤上生长的植物物种，例如蛇纹石土壤（高浓度的金属），沼泽（低pH）或蒸发物（高盐度），占全球植物生物多样性的很大一部分，但令人惊讶的是，对其进化史的了解鲜为人知。例如，在长期的进化时间内，植物谱系限制在这些异常土壤中是否持续存在？同样，这样的血统对过去气候变化有何反应？ 该项目将使用仅在美国和墨西哥奇瓦瓦州沙漠中的石膏土壤中生长的大量但研究不足的植物来回答此类问题。 通过生成和分析大型DNA序列数据集，将重建并进行比较。 这项国际研究计划是了解大型土壤限制的植物物种的起源和进化多样化的首要综合努力，因此将极大地提高我们对土壤如何影响植物进化以及土壤限制性植物如何应对持续的气候变化的理解。该项目还将提供一个新颖而引人入胜的框架，用于通过使用高中教师讲习班，创新的本科生物学实验室活动以及对学生研究人员的广泛指导，以改善高中和大学生的进化素养。