Origins of New Zealand Cicadas

Deb 00-89946克里斯汀·M·西蒙康涅狄格大学的克里斯·西蒙和他的同事们获得了一笔赠款，用蝉来检验关于景观和气候变化对物种形成的影响的经典假说。除了创建新西兰(NZ)澳大利亚(AU)和新喀里多尼亚(NC)蝉属的进化树(家谱)外，该项目还将：1)描述未知物种并扩大我们用于物种鉴定的健全资料库；2)使用新的贝叶斯统计方法估计物种形成事件的分子时钟日期；3)创建新西兰蝉和相关AU&Amp；NC物种的“电子现场指南”；以及4)培训博士后研究助理。新西兰蝉的40种(5属)是这项工作的理想物种，因为它们的自然历史和分布得到了很好的研究，它们几乎生活在新西兰所有的生态系统中，而且它们被假设为随着有充分记录的地质/气候事件而多样化。这项研究将通过增加一个关键的时间维度来检验生物地理学假说。这项工作将加强对一种新描述的高度多样化的动物的认识，并有助于理解南太平洋地区的生物地理学。它将复活研究新西兰蝉近20年的C.A.弗莱明和J.S.Dugdale的有价值的未出版的田野笔记和分类草图。所有结果都将公布在西蒙博士的网站蝉中心上，包括物种分布图、世界研究人员名单、可在网上搜索的标本数据库、物种和栖息地的照片、关系的系统发育树和物种描述。该网站将链接到其他系统学数据库，并将包括新西兰、澳大利亚和北卡罗来纳州的蝉的电子野外指南。该赠款将培训一名博士后助理，学习从建树到物种描述的所有方面的系统学。最后，这项研究将为未来的工作奠定基础，包括：与AUS和NC研究人员合作对形态和分子进行联合分析；对新西兰蝉属进行修订；建立蝉部落和昆虫目半翅目的深层进化树；以及性信号进化在物种形成中的作用分析。

DEB 00-89946Christine M. SimonDr. Chris Simon and colleagues at the University of Connecticut have been awarded a grant to test classical hypotheses concerning the influence of landscape and climate changes on speciation using cicadas. In addition to creating an evolutionary tree (genealogy) for related New Zealand (NZ) Australian (AU) and New Caledonian (NC) cicada genera, this project will: 1) Describe unknown species and enlarge our sound library for species identification; 2) Use new Bayesian statistics to estimate molecular clock dates of speciation events; 3) Create an "electronic field guide" to the cicadas of NZ, and related AU & NC species, and 4) Train a Postdoctoral Research Associate. The 40 species (5 genera) of NZ cicadas are ideal for this work because their natural history and distributions are well studied, they inhabit almost all NZ ecosystems, and they are hypothesized to have diversified in concert with well-documented geological/ climatological events. This research will test biogeographic hypotheses by adding a crucial time dimension.This work will enhance knowledge of a newly described and highly diverse fauna and contribute to the understanding of the biogeography of the Austral-Pacific region. It will resurrect valuable unpublished field notes and taxonomic sketches by C. A. Fleming and J. S. Dugdale who studied NZ cicadas for nearly twenty years. All results will appear on Dr. Simon's website, Cicada Central, including species distribution maps, lists of world researchers, web-searchable specimen databases, photographs of species and habitats, phylogenetic trees of relationships, and species descriptions. This site will link to other systematics databases and will comprise an electronic field guide to the cicadas of NZ, AU, and NC The grant will train a postdoctoral associate in all aspects of systematics from tree building to species description. Finally, this research will create a foundation for future work including: combined analysis of morphology and molecules in collaboration with AUS and NC researchers; revision of the NZ cicada genera; a deep-level evolutionary tree of cicada tribes and of the insect order Hemiptera; and an analysis of the role of sexual signal evolution in speciation.