AToL: Collaborative Research: AmphibiaTree, An integrated Phylogenetic and Phyloinformatics Approach to the Tree of Amphibians

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0334952Cannatella and HillisA grant has been awarded to Drs. David Cannatella and David Hillis at the University of Texas at Austin, as part of a four-institution collaboration, to study phylogenetic relationships of the living amphibians and their close fossil relatives. Living Amphibians are a prominent part of the Earth's vertebrate fauna and include three orders: the caecilians (Gymnophiona), salamanders (Caudata), and frogs and toads (Anura). Despite recent advances in discovering and describing their diversity, many critical questions in amphibian evolution remain unresolved and a fresh analysis of evolutionary relationships is needed to take new discoveries into account. Furthermore, the recent decline and apparent extinction of amphibians from many environments makes it urgent that we discover and classify the diversity present today. A team of seven investigators from diverse institutions (University of Texas at Austin, University of California at Berkeley, Harvard University, and the University of Kansas) and their colleagues will collaborate to resolve modern amphibian relationships. Field sampling in biodiversity hotspots will provide materials of new or previously unsampled lineages. Anatomical and morphological data from living and fossil forms will be combined with DNA sequences from a set of defined mitochondrial and nuclear genes for as many species as possible, and will be integrated with existing data sets. Analysis of these large data sets will be used to gain insight into such questions as repeated patterns of evolution, geographic patterns, and rates of evolution. Drs. Cannatella and Hillis will be responsible for coordinating the research amongst the different labs, with an emphasis on field work in South America and integration with nuclear and mitochondrial DNA data as well as overall coordination to construct a phylogeny from the combined and integrated molecular and morphological data. Understanding the evolutionary history of modern amphibians is critical for developing conservation strategies for amphibians as well as completing the vertebrate portion of the tree of life. The project will involve extensive student training and interaction with US and international colleagues. Communication with the public will utilize web resources, especially AmphibiaWeb, an existing site that will be expanded and further developed to provide information on all species of amphibians for professionals and the public at large. AmphibiaWeb will also provide training opportunities for students and senior professionals to enable them more effectively to communicate their findings.