NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2009

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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.