NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2009

2009 财年 NSF 生物学博士后研究奖学金

• 批准号: 0906011
• 负责人: Matthew Helmus
• 金额: $ 12.3万
• 依托单位: Helmus Matthew R
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Fellowship Award
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-01-01 至 2011-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0906011&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: NSF; Postdoctoral; Research; Fellowship; Biology

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship for FY 2009. The training and development plan is entitled "Testing for an effect of common ancestry on species interactions" for Matthew R. Helmus. The host institution for this research is the University of Chicago, and the sponsoring scientist is Timothy J. Wootton. A portion of this research will be performed at the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Yunnan, China under the tutelage of Charles H. Cannon. Interactions among species, such as competition and predation, are fundamental drivers of biological diversification. Because interactions depend on species traits and traits evolve and reflect common ancestry, one would expect to see phylogenetic signal in how species interact. Phylogenetic signal is the propensity for closely related species to have similar traits (e.g., frogs look like frogs and snakes look like snakes). However, there are few explicit tests to determine whether directly measured species interactions do in fact show phylogenetic signal. This research compiles an extensive set of species interaction data that were directly measured by experiment and observation and develops the statistical tools to test how phylogenetic signal varies across different types of direct and indirect interactions. Thus, this research searches for evidence to support a widely held but largely untested assumption in the evolutionary and ecological sciences and creates a statistical foundation for applied research into the use of phylogeny to predict, for example, the impact of introduced species on native species.This project has strong international, open-source software development, and mentoring components. Software that streamlines data processing and analyses is being developed in collaboration with scientists at the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Yunnan, China. Interaction and phylogenetic data sets are being compiled and statistical models are being developed at the University of Chicago in collaboration with the sponsoring research laboratory. These bioinformatic tools and data sets are being disseminated and made freely available to the public. Furthermore, the Fellow is mentoring undergraduate and graduate students on independent research projects directly related to his research topic both in China and the United States.

本行动资助NSF 2009年度博士后研究奖学金。培训和发展计划的标题是“测试共同祖先对物种相互作用的影响”，由马修·r·赫尔姆斯（Matthew R. Helmus）负责。这项研究的主办机构是芝加哥大学，赞助科学家是蒂莫西·j·伍顿。本研究的一部分将在中国云南西双版纳热带植物园进行，由Charles H. Cannon指导。物种之间的相互作用，如竞争和捕食，是生物多样化的基本驱动力。因为相互作用依赖于物种特征，而特征的进化反映了共同的祖先，人们会期望在物种相互作用中看到系统发育信号。系统发育信号是近亲物种具有相似特征的倾向（例如，青蛙看起来像青蛙，蛇看起来像蛇）。然而，很少有明确的测试来确定直接测量的物种相互作用是否确实显示了系统发育信号。本研究汇编了一套广泛的物种相互作用数据，这些数据是通过实验和观察直接测量的，并开发了统计工具来测试系统发育信号在不同类型的直接和间接相互作用中如何变化。因此，本研究寻找证据来支持在进化和生态科学中广泛持有但基本上未经检验的假设，并为应用系统发育预测（例如，引进物种对本地物种的影响）的研究创造统计基础。该项目具有强大的国际化、开源软件开发和指导组件。简化数据处理和分析的软件正在与中国云南西双版纳热带植物园的科学家合作开发。在赞助研究实验室的合作下，芝加哥大学正在编制相互作用和系统发育数据集，并正在开发统计模型。这些生物信息学工具和数据集正在向公众免费传播和提供。此外，该研究员还在中国和美国指导本科生和研究生进行与其研究课题直接相关的独立研究项目。