Collaborative Research: Coevolution of Hosts and Parasitoids within a Geographic Mosaic

共同进化-相互作用的物种经历相互进化变化的过程-是生物多样性产生和维持的主要驱动力之一。过去十年的研究表明，空间异质性可以影响共同进化的相互作用。然而，一个完整的，机械的理解空间异质性对协同进化的影响仍然需要。拟议的研究结合了理论和实证的方法，严格评估空间异质性的资源可用性和分散栖息地斑块之间的影响协同进化。它利用大肠杆菌和噬菌体T7，一种E.大肠杆菌作为共同进化的模式生物。扩散和资源的可用性直接操纵的实验将结合理论模型，将主机-寄生虫相互作用的细节，以提供定性和定量的预测如何分散在一个异质的景观影响共同进化。 这项研究提供了一个关键的中间地带之间的相对简单的当前数学模型和复杂的实地研究。这项研究将增加我们对共同进化和后居理论的地理镶嵌理论的理解，这是保护生物学中栖息地破碎化的基础。这项工作还将增加我们对共同进化微生物的理解，这些微生物执行许多关键的生态系统服务，并且一直被广泛研究。最后，这项研究将有助于我们了解空间异质性如何影响相互作用的生物体的生态和进化。

Coevolution - the process by which interacting species undergo reciprocal evolutionary change - is one of the major driving forces underlying the generation and maintenance of biodiversity. Research over the past decade has shown that spatial heterogeneity can influence coevolutionary interactions. However, a complete, mechanistic understanding of the influence of spatial heterogeneity on coevolution is still needed. The proposed research combines theoretical and empirical approaches to rigorously evaluate how spatial heterogeneity in resource availability and dispersal among habitat patches influence coevolution. It utilizes the bacterium Escherichia coli and the bacteriophage T7, a viral parasitoid of E. coli, as model coevolving organisms. Experiments in which dispersal and resource availability are directly manipulated will be combined with theoretical models that incorporate details of the host-parasitoid interaction to provide both qualitative and quantitative predictions of how dispersal across a heterogeneous landscape influences coevolution. This research provides a crucial middle ground between the relative simplicity of current mathematical models and the complexity of field studies. This research will add to our understanding of the geographic mosaic theory of coevolution and metacommunity theory, which underlie much of the work on habitat fragmentation in conservation biology. This work will also increase our understanding of coevolving microbes, which perform many crucial ecosystem services and which have been vastly understudied. Finally, the research will contribute to our general knowledge of how spatial heterogeneity influences the ecology and evolution of interacting organisms.