Bees: Biodiversity, biogeography

蜜蜂：生物多样性、生物地理学

• 批准号: RGPIN-2015-03764
• 负责人: Packer, Laurence
• 金额: $ 4.3万
• 依托单位: York University
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2019-01-01 至 2020-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=690855
• 关键词: Bees; Biodiversity; biogeography

Bees are essential components of almost all terrestrial environments through their pollinating activities, including many agricultural crops. Gaining an understanding of the taxonomy, ecology and evolutionary history of bees is important. We investigate these topics in a variety of ways.***1. The Atacama Desert in Chile is one of the oldest and driest deserts in the world: over large areas, rainfall is measured in mm per decade and often does not reach double digits. Even on the edge of the absolute desert there are plants and bees, and one particular genus predominates, yet most of its species remain undescribed. We will describe these species and assess the degree to which they specialize on single species of host plants (some seem to). The adaptations of bees to their floral hosts is indicated by extreme modifications of their mouthparts, with these unusual characteristics arising independently multiple times seemingly to permit access to nectar from nectaries that are deep, presumably to avoid evaporation in the arid environment.  We will compare the patterns of speciation of the bees and the plants and interpret both with dated evolutionary trees which will enable us to assess the impact of past geological events and palaeoenvironmental conditions upon the mutualisms.***2. Cuckoo bees lay eggs in the nests of other bees and might be expected to be more sensitive to a deteriorating environment because they, in effect, occupy a higher trophic level. However, they are usually taxonomically difficult. We will use integrative taxonomy on New World species of the genus Epeolus, produce identification keys for all North America species and perform morphological and molecular phylogenetic studies of the genus and its hosts and use dated phylogenies to assess the extent to which speciation of the hosts impacted that of the cuckoos. We will investigate the extent to which host chemicals are matched by the cuckoos so as to decrease the chances their activities are detected. This chemical matching would place constraints on cuckoos that switch-hosts and we will assess this with our evolutionary trees.***3. Evolutionary trees for bees based upon morphology often conflict in fundamentally important ways from those obtained from DNA sequence data. We will try to resolve this conflict by assessing the impact of taxonomic outliers (rogues).  We will also amalgamate all available morphological data for the first time - surprisingly, this has not been done previously.  We will analyse the resulting data exhaustively and combine it with molecular data.  This work is facilitated by the enormous research collection we have built up - ~30% of the world's 20,000+ species of bee and 90% of the 482 genera.  We will add data from the bee's closest wasp relatives.***Students working in my laboratory will be exposed to an enormous diversity of bee research and collaborate with experts within the department, nationally and internationally and use state.**

蜜蜂通过授粉活动成为几乎所有陆地环境的重要组成部分，了解蜜蜂的分类、生态和进化历史非常重要。***1。智利的阿塔卡马沙漠是世界上最古老、最干燥的沙漠之一：大面积的降雨量以每十年毫米为单位，通常不会达到两位数，即使在绝对沙漠的边缘也有植物和蜜蜂，一个特定的属占主导地位，但其大多数物种仍未被描述。我们将描述这些物种并评估它们对单一寄主植物物种的专化程度（有些似乎如此）。它们的口器发生了极端的变化，这些不寻常的特征多次独立出现，似乎可以从深处的花蜜中获取花蜜，大概是为了避免在干旱环境中蒸发。我们将比较蜜蜂的物种形成模式。和植物，并用过时的进化树来解释两者，这将使我们能够评估过去的地质事件和古环境条件对互利共生的影响。***2。对恶化的环境更敏感，因为它们实际上占据了更高的营养级。然而，它们通常在分类学上很困难，我们将对新世界的 Epeolus 物种使用综合分类法。所有北美物种的识别关键，并对杜鹃属及其寄主进行形态学和分子系统发育研究，并使用过时的系统发育来评估寄主物种形成对杜鹃鸟影响的程度。我们将调查寄主化学物质的影响程度。杜鹃进行匹配，以减少它们的活动被检测到的机会。这种化学匹配会对杜鹃转换宿主产生限制，我们将用我们的进化树来评估这一点。***3。基于形态学的数据通常与来自 DNA 序列数据的数据存在根本性的冲突，我们将尝试通过评估分类异常值（流氓）的影响来解决这一冲突，令人惊讶的是，我们还将首次合并所有可用的形态学数据。我们将彻底分析所得数据并将其与分子数据结合起来，这项工作得到了我们建立的庞大研究收集（约占世界总量的 30%）的推动。 20,000 多种蜜蜂和 482 个属中的 90%。​我们将添加来自蜜蜂最近的黄蜂亲属的数据。***在我的实验室工作的学生将接触到种类繁多的蜜蜂研究，并与系内专家合作。 ，国内和国际并使用状态。**