Assessing the long-term stability of adaptive radiations using the fossil record

使用化石记录评估适应性辐射的长期稳定性

• 批准号: 2050228
• 负责人: Melissa Kemp
• 金额: $ 59.51万
• 依托单位: University of Texas at Austin
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-09-01 至 2024-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2050228&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Assessing; long; term; stability; adaptive

The proposed research uses an interdisciplinary approach to study diversification and extinction processes in changing environments. Adaptive radiation, the process whereby organisms diversify to fulfill a variety of ecological roles, is responsible for producing many of the spectacular ecological communities on our planet. But whether the ecological communities generated from adaptive radiations persist over long timescales–and the extent to which they are reshaped by environmental change–remains an unresolved question. This project will reconstruct morphological diversity in a model system–the Anolis lizards of the Caribbean–to evaluate the longevity of morphological diversity generated by adaptive radiations. This research bridges the biological sciences and the geosciences, providing an interdisciplinary platform to train a diverse set of students, including undergraduates from underrepresented backgrounds and students who are training to become K-12 STEM teachers. Additionally, 3 dimensional models of skulls generated by this project will be used to develop new educational modules on morphological evolution and diversity change through time that will be deployed in undergraduate and high school classrooms. The proposed research provides significant information in four main areas: (1) characterizing how species partition morphospace in an adaptive radiation; (2) establishing whether ecological communities persist over geologic timescales; (3) identifying the nature of phenotypic change over geological timescales; and (4) determining if shifts in phenotypic diversity are correlated to environmental changes. These issues will be addressed through the creation of a comprehensive, high-resolution X-ray chromatography dataset of extant Anolis species from alcohol-preserved museum specimens and integration of those data with Anolis fossil specimens from throughout the Greater Antilles. The research is relevant to evolutionary biologists, ecologists, paleontologists, and will be particularly instructive in identifying how ecological communities might change in the future.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

拟议的研究使用跨学科的方法来研究不断变化的环境中的多元化和扩展过程。自适应辐射是生物体多元化以履行各种生态角色的过程，负责产生我们星球上许多壮观的生态群落。但是，是否在自适应辐射中产生的生态群落是否持续到长时间尺度，以及环境变化所重塑的程度，这是一个尚未解决的问题。该项目将在模型系统（加勒比海的阿诺斯蜥蜴）中重建形态学多样性，以评估自适应辐射产生的形态多样性的寿命。这项研究桥接了生物科学和地球科学，提供了一个跨学科平台来培训多样化的学生，包括来自代表性不足的背景的本科生和正在培训成为K-12 STEM老师的学生。此外，该项目产生的三个维度模型将用于开发有关形态演化和多样性变化的新教育模块，这些模块会随着时间的流逝而变化，该模块将在本科和高中教室中部署。拟议的研究在四个主要领域提供了重要信息：（1）表征物种在适应性辐射中的划分方式； （2）确定生态社区是否持续在地质时间尺度上； （3）确定与地质时间尺度表型变化的性质； （4）确定表型多样性的变化是否与环境变化相关。这些问题将通过创建来自饮酒保留的博物馆标本的现存的厌氧菌物种的全面，高分辨率的X射线色谱数据集，并将这些数据与来自整个更大的Antilles的Anolis Fossil标本的整合。这项研究与进化生物学家，生态学家，古生物学家有关，并且在确定未来生态社区可能会发生变化方面特别具有启发性。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是通过基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响标准通过评估来评估的。