A Morphological and Molecular Investigation of Castaneoid Evolution

小行星9707945 生态和经济上重要的科壳斗科的橡树，山毛榉，栗子是最熟悉的温带植物学家从相对少数的物种。但该科有许多热带物种，在东南亚尤其多样化，杜克大学的保罗·马诺斯博士将在那里进行实地考察，对两个最大的属，锥属和石栎属进行取样。这两个属包括近一半的物种多样性的家庭和代表一个更大的范围内的形态多样性的特征壳斗（毛刺或橡子）比温带成员的家庭。这项研究的一个目标是通过整合这些植物的传统形态学知识与核核糖体基因DNA测序的新分子数据来推断许多热带物种之间的谱系或系统发育关系，这些新分子数据提供了样品之间突变差异的直接测量。这种系统发育框架反过来将允许分析的各种壳斗形态的热带和亚热带壳斗科的谱系中的发展历史，特别是在壳斗类型，是在成熟时难以区分，但怀疑从不同的少年阶段的趋同进化。 在“热带栗子”或栗类物种多样化的范围和历史知之甚少。野外工作，现有的植物标本馆收藏的研究，和新的DNA序列数据将被汇集在一起，以提高我们对这些植物的基本分类和系统发育的理解。热带多样性通常包含了解温带植物进化历史的关键要素，这可能是东南亚多样的昆虫授粉的锥属和石栎属的情况。这些研究将被证明是有用的解释形态进化，并将主要群体的栗树纳入一个地理和系统发育框架。

9707945 Manos The ecologically and economically important family Fagaceae of oaks, beeches, and chestnuts is most familiar to temperate-zone botanists from a relative handful of species. But the family has many tropical species, and is especially diverse in southeast Asia, where Dr. Paul Manos of Duke University will be conducting field work to sample the two largest genera, Castanopsis and Lithocarpus. These two genera comprise nearly half of the species diversity in the family and represent an even greater range of morphological diversity in the characteristic cupule (the burr or acorn) than found in the temperate-zone members of the family. One goal of the research is to infer genealogical or phylogenetic relationships among the many tropical species, by integrating traditional morphological knowledge of these plants with new molecular data from DNA sequencing of nuclear ribosomal genes, which provide a direct measure of mutational differences between samples. This phylogenetic framework in turn will allow analysis of the history of development of various cupule morphologies in the lineages of tropical and subtropical Fagaceae, especially among cupule types that are indistinguishable at maturity but suspected of convergent evolution from different juvenile stages. The range and history of species diversification in the "tropical chestnuts" or castaneoids are poorly known. Field work, study of existing herbarium collections, and new DNA sequence data will be brought together to improve our understanding of the basic taxonomy and phylogeny of these plants. Tropical diversity often contains key elements to understand the evolutionary history of plants in the temperate zone, and this is likely to be the case with the diverse, insect-pollinated Castanopsis and Lithocarpus of southeast Asia. The studies will prove useful in interpreting morphological evolution, and will place the major groups of castaneoids into a geographical as well as phylogenetic framework.