Phylogeny and Evolutionary History of Three Clades of Neotropical Snakes

关于生物多样性模式起源的许多问题都涉及两个中心主题：(1)在进化谱系中，适应的多样性模式（例如，喂养专业化）是如何进化的？(2)生物和地质（例如大陆漂移过程）的相互作用如何形成生物地理分布的模式？谱系成员之间的进化关系（系统发育）假说是回答这些问题的基础。拟议的研究将建立一个详细的系统发育为三个谱系的中美洲和南美洲的蛇选择他们的形态和生态多样性。这些资料将用于解决有关这种多样性的演变模式的问题，并将为解释其分布提供一个历史框架。要研究的谱系包括唯一在加拉帕戈斯群岛定居的蛇，这被认为是研究进化过程的经典“自然实验”。与该项目有关的实地工作将证明所包括物种的生态信息、形态学研究的标本和随后生化分析的组织。蛇类之间的关系将通过形态学特征和蛋白质（酶）和核酸（DNA）的生化特征来评估。这些谱系的系统发育将直接适用于有关这些蛇的进化生物学的问题。然而，更一般地说，在解决有关产生形态多样性的进化过程的问题，以及关于中美洲和南美洲动物群的分布历史（生物地理学）的历史假设方面，将具有重要意义。

Two central themes pervade many questions relating to the origin of patterns in biological diversity: (1) How do patterns of diversity in adaptation (for example, feeding specializations) evolve within evolutionary lineages? and (2) How are patterns in the geographic distributions of organisms generated through the interaction of biological and geological (for example, continental drift processes? Hypotheses of evolutionary relationships (phylogeny) among members of a lineage are the foundation upon which answers to such questions are based. The proposed research will establish a detailed phylogeny for three lineages of Central and South American snakes selected for their morphological and ecological diversity. These will be used to address questions concerning patterns of evolution of that diversity and will provide a historical framework for interpreting their distributions. The lineages to be studied include the only snakes to have colonized the Galapagos Islands, which have been considered a classic "natural experiment " for the study of evolutionary processes. Field work associated with the project will proved ecological information on the included species, specimens for morphological studies, and tissues for subsequent biochemical analyses. Relationships among snakes will be evaluated using morphological characters and biochemical characters of proteins (enzymes) and nucleic acids (DNA). The phylogenies developed for these lineages will be directly applicable to questions concerning the evolutionary biology of these snakes. More generally, however, there will be significance in addressing questions concerning evolutionary processes that generate diversity in morphology, and historical hypotheses concerning the distributional history (biogeography) of the Central and South American fauna.