Organization of the Telencephalon in Lungfishes

这个奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案(公法111-5)资助的。首席研究员研究脊椎动物的大脑，以及它们是如何进化来辅助不同的行为和适应的。在这个项目中，他将用各种技术研究非洲肺鱼的大脑，以揭示其结构和组织。我们知道，最初从海洋中出现并生活在陆地上的动物是瓣鳍鱼类，但我们对所有陆地脊椎动物的祖先知之甚少。然而，关于现存瓣鳍鱼类的信息将使我们能够推断出关于这种祖先生物学的大量信息，特别是当这些信息与来自这些早期陆地居民的两栖动物的数据进行比较时。脑组织，特别是前脑的组织，一直被用来为动物的生物学及其与其他动物的分类关系提供有价值的线索。对于活着的瓣鳍鱼类的脑组织，人们知之甚少，因为它们的数量很少，研究起来也不方便。除了臭名昭著且难以捉摸的腔棘鱼，现存的瓣鳍鱼类只有六种肺鱼，原产于非洲、南美洲和澳大利亚。这个项目将产生这样的信息，并有可能为比较神经解剖学领域提供有价值的见解。新发现的信息将与现有的关于两栖动物大脑的信息进行比较，以检验这一假设，即活着的瓣鳍鱼类的大脑比之前认为的更像两栖动物的大脑。活着的瓣鳍鱼类和两栖动物在大脑组织上的相似之处可能也存在于它们的共同祖先中，从而使科学家能够推断出关于第一批从海洋中出现并生活在陆地上的陆地动物的迫切需要的信息。该项目将提供资源，继续在世界各地的学者和公众中传播这项工作。

"This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009(Public Law 111-5)."The principal investigator studies vertebrate brains and how they have evolved to subserve different behaviors and adaptations. In this project he will study the brain of the African lungfish, with various techniques that will reveal its structure and organization. We know that the animals that first emerged from the sea to live on land were lobe-finned fishes, but we know little else about these ancestors of all land vertebrates. Information on living lobe-finned fishes, however, will allow us to infer a great deal of information regarding the biology of this ancestor, particularly when that information is compared with data on amphibians, which descended from these early land-dwellers. Brain organization, particularly the organization of the forebrain, has been used to provide valuable clues to an animal's biology and it's taxonomic relationships with other animals. Little is known about brain organization in the living lobe-finned fishes, as they are few in number and have not been convenient to study. In addition to the infamous and elusive coelacanth, the living lobe-finned fishes are only six species of lungfishes, native to Africa, South America, and Australia. This project will generate such information and has the potential to provide valuable insight into the field of comparative neuroanatomy. The newly found information will be compared with existing information on amphibian brains to test the hypothesis that the brains of living lobe-finned fishes are far more like those of amphibians than has previously been believed. The similarities in brain organization between living lobe-finned fishes and amphibians likely existed also in their common ancestor, and thus will allow scientists to infer much needed information about the first land animals to emerge from the sea to live on land. This project will provide resources to continue dissemination of this work among scholars and the lay public across the world.