Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biology for FY 2009

2009财年生物学博士后研究奖学金

• 批准号: 0905765
• 负责人: Robert Pyron
• 金额: $ 12.3万
• 依托单位: Pyron Robert A
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Fellowship Award
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-10-01 至 2011-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0905765&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Postdoctoral; Research; Fellowships; Biology; FY

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship for FY 2009. The fellowship supports a research and training plan entitled "Historical causes of biodiversity: the effects of evolution, ecology, and time on latitudinal species richness gradients" for Robert Pyron. The host institution for this research is Stony Brook University, and the sponsoring scientist is John Wiens.One of the most obvious and fundamentally important aspects of biology is the vast amount of biodiversity observed worldwide, which is concentrated in the tropics. A latitudinal gradient in species richness (i.e., higher tropical biodiversity) is one of the oldest and most debated patterns in ecology and evolutionary biology, and dozens of hypotheses have been proposed to explain it. However, many hypotheses ignore the processes that directly change the number of species in discrete areas (i.e., speciation, extinction, dispersal), and no single explanation has been able to satisfactorily explain the gradient across taxa. This research examines the underlying causes of latitudinal diversity gradients in two of the most diverse vertebrate groups, squamate reptiles (lizards and snakes) and amphibians (frogs, salamanders, and caecilians) by using genomic, museum, and environmental bioinformatic databases to quantify the contributions of ecological, temporal, and evolutionary factors to global patterns of biodiversity and attempts to develop new statistical methods to study these patterns. Understanding the causes of the development and distribution of species richness is crucial given the current biodiversity extinction crisis we now face, particularly in amphibians.The training objectives of this fellowship are to strengthen skills related to both computational analysis using large-scale bioinformatic databases, as well as an increased knowledge of global biodiversity patterns, specifically in squamates and amphibians. The integration of computational bioinformatics and organismal phylogenetics will also permitinterdisciplinary collaborations with researchers worldwide.

这项行动为2009财政年度的NSF博士后研究奖学金提供资金。该研究金支持Robert Pyron的研究和培训计划，题为“生物多样性的历史原因：进化、生态和时间对纬度物种丰富度梯度的影响”。这项研究的主办机构是斯托尼布鲁克大学，赞助科学家是约翰·威恩斯。生物学最明显和最根本的重要方面之一是在全球范围内观察到的大量生物多样性，而这些生物多样性集中在热带地区。物种丰富度的纬度梯度（即，较高的热带生物多样性）是生态学和进化生物学中最古老和最有争议的模式之一，已经提出了几十种假说来解释它。然而，许多假说忽略了直接改变离散区域物种数量的过程（即，物种形成，灭绝，扩散），没有一个单一的解释已经能够令人满意地解释跨类群的梯度。这项研究探讨了两个最多样化的脊椎动物群体--有鳞爬行动物--纬度多样性梯度的根本原因（蜥蜴和蛇）和两栖动物（青蛙，蝾螈和caecilians）通过使用基因组，博物馆和环境生物信息学数据库，以量化生态，时间，生物多样性的全球模式和进化因素，并试图开发新的统计方法来研究这些模式。了解物种丰富度的发展和分布的原因是至关重要的，因为我们现在面临的生物多样性灭绝危机，特别是在两栖动物中。该奖学金的培训目标是加强与使用大规模生物信息学数据库进行计算分析相关的技能，以及增加对全球生物多样性模式的了解，特别是在有鳞目动物和两栖动物中。计算生物信息学和生物遗传学的整合也将促进与世界各地研究人员的跨学科合作。