Evolutionary routes to phenotypic convergence in vertebrates

脊椎动物表型趋同的进化途径

• 批准号: NE/Z000149/1
• 负责人: Gavin Thomas
• 金额: $ 91万
• 依托单位: University of Sheffield
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2024 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FZ000149%2F1
• 关键词: Evolutionary; routes; phenotypic; convergence; vertebrates

Why isn't there more diversity of Life on Earth? There are millions of species on Earth, but many distantly related species have strikingly similar phenotypes, suggesting that biodiversity is in fact far less varied than we might expect. For example, sharks and dolphins have remarkably similar body shapes, but their most recent common ancestor lived over 290 million years ago. One reason for this repetition of forms is convergent evolution - the evolution of similarities in unrelated species. There are hundreds of examples of convergence in myriad traits including morphology, genes, ecological niches, life-history strategies and behaviour. Convergence is a central concept in evolutionary biology because it informs understanding of many fundamental evolutionary patterns and processes, including the role of constraints in evolution, morphological diversity, adaptive radiations and natural selection.Convergent evolution is often considered to be a ubiquitous feature of life on Earth. Yet, despite many striking examples and a long history of study, we currently lack a comprehensive understanding of both patterns of, and processes driving convergence. Many examples have never been properly quantified, and those that have been explored more thoroughly use a variety of methods, taxa, traits, and scales, preventing recognition of general patterns. We have identified two critical knowledge gaps and key questions:1) A lack of understanding of broad-scale phylogenetic patterns of convergence. We will therefore ask, how frequently does convergent evolution occur at broad phylogenetic scales and how strong are examples of convergence?2) A lack of understanding of the processes leading to convergence across evolutionary scales. To address this we will ask, what are the micro- and macroevolutionary mechanisms acting on species traits that lead to convergence?Advances in our understanding of the patterns and processes driving convergent evolution have been hampered by a lack of suitable methods and data. Answering the key questions above requires a new conceptual and analytical framework for understanding how convergent phenotypes evolve. To solve these challenges, we will develop a framework to measure the extent of convergent evolution and identify the most likely evolutionary routes to phenotypic convergence. Our methods build on microevolutionary and adaptive radiation theory, and recent methodological advances designed by the research team. We will develop and test the performance of our framework using our recently collected 3D beak morphology dataset from >8,700 bird species, which will allow us to test for convergence at multiple phylogenetic scales. We will then apply our framework to diverse examples of morphological evolution to identify broad-scale patterns in convergence across the vertebrate tree of life. The proposed research is timely because phenotypic datasets of such breadth and ecological relevance have only recently become available (and are rapidly increasing in number and trait/taxonomic coverage) and coincide with major advances in computational methods to assess convergence.The outcomes of our proposed work will provide a major advance in our understanding of convergent evolution. These advances are critical to driving a step change in our understanding of the nature of limits to evolution and, as a consequence, the processes that gave rise to the diversity of life on Earth.

为什么地球上没有更多的生命？地球上有数百万个物种，但是许多遥远的物种具有非常相似的表型，这表明生物多样性实际上远不如我们预期的。例如，鲨鱼和海豚的身体形状非常相似，但他们最近的共同祖先在2.9亿年前居住。这种形式重复的原因之一是收敛进化 - 无关物种中相似性的演变。在无数性状中，包括形态学，基因，生态壁ches，生活历史策略和行为，有数百种融合的例子。融合是进化生物学中的一个核心概念，因为它可以使人们对许多基本进化模式和过程的理解，包括约束在进化，形态学多样性，适应性辐射和自然选择中的作用。经常被认为是地球上生命的一种融合进化。然而，尽管有许多引人注目的例子和悠久的研究历史，但我们目前对两种模式和推动融合的过程都缺乏全面的理解。许多示例从未得到适当量化，并且那些经过更彻底的方法，使用各种方法，分类单元，性状和尺度，从而阻止了对一般模式的识别。我们已经确定了两个关键的知识差距和关键问题：1）缺乏对广泛的系统发育模式的了解。因此，我们会问，收敛进化在广泛的系统发育量表上发生多久，收敛的例子有多强？2）缺乏对导致进化量表收敛的过程的理解。为了解决这个问题，我们将问，什么是对导致融合的物种特征的微观和宏观进化机制？在我们对驱动趋同进化的模式和过程的理解中的进步受到了缺乏合适的方法和数据的阻碍。回答上面的关键问题需要一个新的概念和分析框架，以了解融合表型的发展方式。为了解决这些挑战，我们将开发一个框架来衡量融合进化的程度，并确定最可能的进化途径到表型收敛。我们的方法建立在微观进化和自适应辐射理论的基础上，以及研究团队设计的最新方法论进步。我们将使用最近收集的3D喙形态数据集从> 8,700种鸟类物种中开发和测试框架的性能，这将使我们能够在多个系统发育尺度上测试收敛。然后，我们将把我们的框架应用于形态进化的各种例子，以确定跨脊椎动物生命树的融合中的广泛模式。拟议的研究之所以及时，是因为这种广度和生态相关性的表型数据集直到最近才获得（并且数量和特质/分类学覆盖范围正在迅速增加），并且与评估融合的计算方法的重大进展相吻合。我们提出的工作的结果将为我们对融合进化的理解提供重大进步。这些进步对于推动我们对进化限制的性质的理解以及导致地球上生命多样性的过程的理解是至关重要的。