Microevolution by Natural Selection in Disturbed Tropical Habitats

该奖项将支持劳伦斯吉尔伯特教授的 德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校的研究合作 与丰达西翁第二基金会的Mauricio Linares教授 Expedicion Botanica在波哥大，哥伦比亚. 研究人员 打算研究人类进化的后果 对热带森林的影响。 在以前的一项研究中， 在一个特定的蝴蝶种群中， 在过去的世纪里， 据推测 这些变化是由人为干扰引起的 在 建议的工作，调查人员将收集更多的 关于最近的进化变化的性质的证据 在同一个系统中， 对这些变化负责。 结果将 产生关于当前自然的性质的假设 选择变形频率。 这些次要假设将 通过比较表型在 在他们的后代中， 从受干扰和未受干扰的栖息地捕捉蝴蝶。

This award will support Professor Lawrence Gilbert of the University of Texas at Austin in a research collaboration with Professor Mauricio Linares of the Fundacion Segunda Expedicion Botanica in Bogota, Colombia. The researchers intend to study the evolutionary consequences of human impact on tropical forests. In a previous study it was shown that the frequency of polymorphic forms in a particular butterfly population changed dramatically during the past century. It was hypothesized that these changes were caused by human perturbation. In the proposed work, the investigators will gather additional evidence about the nature of the recent evolutionary changes in the same system, and the selection pressures that have been responsible for these changes. The results will generate hypotheses about the nature of current natural selection on morph frequency. Such secondary hypotheses will be tested by comparing the distributions of phenotypes in the wild with their distributions among the offspring of wild- caught butterflies from disturbed and undisturbed habitats.