DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Evolutionary Diversification and Community Assembly in Melanesian Forest Frogs: Testing the Hypothesis of Replicated Adaptive Radiation

论文研究：美拉尼西亚森林蛙的进化多样化和群落组装：检验复制适应性辐射的假设

• 批准号: 1701952
• 负责人: Rafe Brown
• 金额: $ 1.63万
• 依托单位: University of Kansas Center for Research Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-07-01 至 2018-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1701952&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: DISSERTATION; RESEARCH; Evolutionary; Diversification; Community

Understanding the mechanisms that generate and regulate biodiversity patterns can provide broad insights into how biological communities assemble and diversify over different timescales. The importance of evolutionary processes for the generation of biodiversity in isolated island systems is well documented. However, the question remains: can processes like speciation and adaptation lead to predictable outcomes during the assembly of biological communities on islands? This study aims to address this question by examining patterns of frog diversity in the Melanesian island archipelagos of the Southwest Pacific. Melanesian forest frogs provide an ideal system to study adaptive processes of diversification because they are distributed across multiple island chains and exhibit a similar set of habitat specialists (ecomorphs), which are unique to each island group. This study will test the hypothesis that these ecologically similar frog communities evolved independently in each archipelago, resulting in the convergence of entire species communities. This project will document a remarkable case of convergent evolution that could provide additional evidence bearing on the evolution and assembly of biological communities worldwide. Portions of this research will also include advanced undergraduate mentoring in science, including genomic sequence capture data collection and analysis. Additionally, the results of this project will be integrated into a classroom learning module geared toward teaching evolutionary concepts to Kansas high school students.A major goal of this study is to resolve the evolutionary relationships among Melanesian Forest Frogs of the genus Cornufer using an exon capture sequencing approach. Phylogenomic data will be integrated with morphometric and ecological data from all species throughout the Melanesian archipelagos to test whether (1) frog ecomorph communities evolved in each archipelago through independent adaptive radiations, (2) ecomorphs evolved only once and subsequently dispersed across archipelagos, or (3) a combination of both. Macroevolutionary models will then be used to evaluate whether frog communities in each archipelago are more or less ecomorphologically convergent that expected by chance, which may suggest that adaptive diversification and community assembly has been nonrandom in Melanesian Forest Frogs. This study will promote the development of another rich, multi-faceted model system of adaptive radiation for a variety of conceptual evolutionary studies on the process of biological diversification and community assembly.

了解生成和调节生物多样性模式的机制可以为生物群落如何在不同时间尺度上聚集和多样化提供广泛的见解。进化过程对于孤岛系统生物多样性产生的重要性已有充分记录。然而，问题仍然存在：物种形成和适应等过程能否在岛屿上生物群落的组装过程中产生可预测的结果？本研究旨在通过研究西南太平洋美拉尼西亚群岛的青蛙多样性模式来解决这个问题。美拉尼西亚森林蛙为研究多样化的适应性过程提供了一个理想的系统，因为它们分布在多个岛链上，并表现出一组相似的栖息地专家（生态形态），这些专家对每个岛屿群都是独一无二的。这项研究将检验这样一个假设：这些生态相似的青蛙群落在每个群岛中独立进化，导致整个物种群落的趋同。该项目将记录一个非凡的趋同进化案例，可以为全球生物群落的进化和组装提供更多证据。这项研究的一部分还将包括高级本科生科学指导，包括基因组序列捕获数据收集和分析。此外，该项目的结果将被整合到一个课堂学习模块中，该模块旨在向堪萨斯州高中生教授进化概念。这项研究的一个主要目标是利用外显子捕获来解决 Cornufer 属美拉尼西亚森林蛙之间的进化关系测序方法。系统基因组数据将与整个美拉尼西亚群岛所有物种的形态测量和生态数据相结合，以测试（1）每个群岛的青蛙生态形态群落是否通过独立的适应性辐射进化，（2）生态形态仅进化一次，随后分散到各个群岛，或者（ 3）两者的结合。然后，宏观进化模型将用于评估每个群岛的青蛙群落在生态形态上是否或多或少与偶然预期的趋同，这可能表明美拉尼西亚森林蛙的适应性多样化和群落组装是非随机的。这项研究将促进另一个丰富的、多方面的适应性辐射模型系统的开发，用于生物多样化和群落组装过程的各种概念进化研究。

项目成果

A new miniature Melanesian Forest Frog (Ceratobatrachidae: Cornufer) from New Britain Island, constituting the first record of the subgenus Batrachylodes from outside of the Solomon Archipelago

来自新不列颠岛的一种新的微型美拉尼西亚森林蛙（角蛙科：Cornufer），构成了所罗门群岛以外的蛙亚属的第一个记录

• DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4370.1.2
• 发表时间: 2018
• 期刊: Zootaxa
• 影响因子: 0.9
• 作者: TRAVERS, SCOTT L.;RICHARDS, STEPHEN J.;BROADHEAD, TAYLOR S.;BROWN, RAFE M.
• 通讯作者: BROWN, RAFE M.

Lizards of the lost arcs: mid-Cenozoic diversification, persistence and ecological marginalization in the West Pacific

• DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2017.1760
• 发表时间: 2018-01
• 期刊: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
• 作者: P. Oliver;Rafe M. Brown;F. Kraus;E. Rittmeyer;S. L. Travers;Cameron D. Siler