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.

该项目整合了一项积极的研究计划，以了解仅限于不寻常土壤的植物的进化，并同样积极地努力提高高中生和大学生对进化生物学核心概念的理解。 仅生长在不常见土壤上的植物物种，例如蛇纹土（高浓度金属）、沼泽（低 pH 值）或蒸发岩（高盐度），构成了全世界植物生物多样性的很大一部分，但令人惊讶的是，人们对它们的进化知之甚少。历史。例如，仅限于这些不寻常土壤的植物谱系是否会在漫长的进化过程中持续存在？同样，这些谱系如何应对过去的气候变化？ 该项目将利用大量但研究不足的植物来回答这些问题，这些植物只生长在美国和墨西哥奇瓦瓦沙漠富含石膏的土壤中。 通过生成和分析大型 DNA 序列数据集，将重建和比较奇瓦瓦沙漠 12 个不同石膏限制植物群的详细进化历史。 这项国际研究计划代表了首次全面了解一大批受土壤限制的植物物种的起源和进化多样性，因此将极大地提高我们对土壤如何影响植物进化以及受土壤限制的植物如何应对的理解。持续的气候变化。该项目还将通过结合高中教师研讨会、文理学院创新的本科生物实验室活动以及对学生研究人员的广泛指导，为提高高中生和大学生的进化素养提供一个新颖且引人入胜的框架。