DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Morphological and Behavioral Evolution in Myrmecocystus

了解形态和行为进化与物种形成和生物地理分化的相互作用仍然是生物学的主要任务之一。这需要有良好支持的具有相关特征变异的群体的系统发展史(进化史)，并使用生物信息模型。这项提案将通过测试进化理论产生的预测来研究这些问题，重点是蜜罐蚂蚁(Myrmecocystus)。这些蚂蚁生活在北美西部的干旱地区，特别值得注意的是它们的觅食时间范围很广(一些蚂蚁只在沙漠白天的高温下觅食，而另一些蚂蚁只在晚上觅食，如果白天在巢外，很快就会死亡)。蚂蚁的进化史将通过多个基因进行推断。标本将被测量腿长和眼睛大小等特征，这可能会对蚂蚁的生态和行为产生重大影响。关于生态、行为和地理范围的其他信息将从文献、收藏信息和个人观察中汇编而成。在需要的地方，将开发新的字符进化模型，并在免费、开源、用户友好的计算机程序中实施，以便其他科学家也可以使用它们。树、人物信息和模型将被用来检验假设，并对这组人的进化做出推断。需要检验的假设包括：由于觅食时间的变化而导致形态特征变化的方向和速度的预测，物种形成后范围扩大后的生态特征置换，觅食时间之间的相对转移率，以及物种形成事件的地理位置。除了获得关于Myrmecocystus进化生物学的见解外，该项目还将把各种生物信息归档到一个可在Web上访问的数据库中，并提供教程，以便其他人可以使用MySQL和Perl等免费可用的工具创建类似的网站。在这个方向上的初步努力(http://www.brianomeara.info/myrmecocystus)已经导致了使用关系数据库和perl动态生成的交互式二分键的发布。对于Myrmecocystus中的每个物种，现在都有一个动态网页，其中包括关于GenBank中该物种可用序列的信息、到其他在线信息的链接，以及从项目数据库返回的关于该物种的信息(如适合用于聚合酶链式反应的引物对或在哪里可以找到该物种)。这使得其他科学家可以从这个项目中学习有效的技术，因为他们被发现了。将编写和发布将纸质钥匙转换为在线钥匙、生成动态物种页面以及使用关系数据库管理此类研究项目的源代码和说明。

Understanding the interplay of morphological and behavioral evolution with speciation and biogeographic differentiation remains one of the main tasks of biology. This requires well-supported phylogenies (evolutionary histories) of groups with relevant character variation and the use of biologically-informed models. This proposal will investigate such questions by testing predictions generated from evolutionary theory, focusing on honeypot ants (Myrmecocystus). These ants occur in arid regions of western North America and are especially noteworthy for their wide range of foraging times (some forage only in the heat of the desert day, while others will only forage at night, perishing quickly if outside the nest at daytime). The ants' evolutionary history will be inferred using multiple genes. Specimens will be measured for traits, such as leg length and eye size, which may have a major effect on the ants' ecology and behavior. Other information on ecology, behavior, and geographic range will be compiled from the literature, information in collections, and personal observation. Where needed, new models for character evolution will be developed and implemented in free, open-source, user-friendly computer programs so that other scientists may also use them. The tree, character information, and models will be used to test hypotheses and make inferences about evolution in this group. Hypotheses to test include predictions regarding the direction and rate of morphological character shifts as a result of changes in foraging time, ecological character displacement following range expansion after speciation, relative transition rates between foraging times, and the geography of speciation events. In addition to obtaining insights about the evolutionary biology of Myrmecocystus, this project will archive a variety of biological information in a web-accessible database and provide tutorials so that others can create similar websites using freely available tools such as MySQL and PERL. Preliminary efforts in this direction ( http://www.brianomeara.info/myrmecocystus ) have led to posting of interactive dichotomous keys generated on the fly using a relational database and PERL. For each species in Myrmecocystus a dynamic web page is now available that includes information on sequences available for that species in GenBank, links to other online information, and information about that species (such as suitable primer pairs for PCR or where the species can be found) returned from the project database. This allows other scientists to learn effective techniques from this project as they are discovered. Source code and instructions for converting paper keys to online keys, generating dynamic species pages, and using a relational database to manage a research project such as this will be written and posted.