RUI: Coevolutionary Convergence and Displacement Across a Geographic Mosaic: Hummingbirds and Heliconias of the Lesser Antilles

生态学家的一个主要目标是了解物种之间的相互作用如何影响群落中物种的形态、行为和组成。植物及其传粉者为实现这一目标提供了模式系统，因为传粉者和花的形态之间的密切对应被许多生态学家解释为相互选择的产物。然而，在当地种群规模上对植物和传粉者的研究往往无法找到相互选择，这对这种解释提出了质疑。共同进化思想最近的一个概念性进展是认识到自然选择中的空间差异和地理景观中的基因交换可以塑造局部共同进化动态，被称为地理镶嵌共同进化理论。这项拟议的研究通过对加勒比海一个岛屿群岛上蜂鸟-植物相互作用的研究来评估该理论的预测。首先，观测和野外实验将检验该理论的预测，即植物和蜂鸟之间的相互作用很好地匹配，并在一些岛屿上导致互惠选择，而在另一些岛屿上则不是。其次，分子遗传学将被用来检验该理论的预测，即遗传交换和自然选择可能塑造岛屿种群内和岛屿种群之间植物的遗传结构。本科生机构的生态学教授和研究机构的植物系统学家之间的合作将培训至少8名本科生、1名研究生和来自4个东道国的工作人员，了解进化生态学的观察、实验、统计和分子遗传学方法，并将为热带雨林授粉系统的保护和管理做出贡献。

A major goal of ecologists has been to understand how interactions between species affect the morphology, behavior, and composition of species in a community. Plants and their pollinators have provided model systems for achieving this goal, because the close correspondence between pollinator and floral morphologies has been interpreted by many ecologists as the product of reciprocal selection. Studies of plants and pollinators at the scale of local populations, however, have often failed to find reciprocal selection, calling this interpretation into question.A recent conceptual advance in coevolutionary thinking has been the recognition that spatial variation in natural selection and gene exchange across a geographic landscape can shape local coevolutionary dynamics, termed the Geographic Mosaic Theory of Coevolution. The proposed research evaluates predictions of the theory through studies of a hummingbird - plant interaction across a Caribbean island archipelago. First, observational and field experiments will test the theory's prediction that interactions between plants and hummingbirds are well-matched and result in reciprocal selection on some islands, but not on others. Second, molecular genetics will be used to examine the theory's prediction that genetic exchange, as well as natural selection, may shape the genetic structure of plants within and between island populations. The collaboration between an ecology professor at an undergraduate institution and a plant systematist at a research institution will train a minimum of eight undergraduate students one graduate student, and workers from four host countries in observational, experimental, statistical, and molecular genetics approaches to evolutionary ecology, and will contribute to the conservation and management of tropical rainforest pollination systems.