CAREER: EVOLVABILITY OF THE CICHLID JAW: THE GENETIC BASES FOR CRANIOFACIAL SHAPE, PLASTICITY, AND MODULARITY

生物多样性就在我们身边，几个世纪以来，它的起源一直是密集研究的焦点。然而，尽管做出了这些努力，我们在很大程度上仍然不了解随着时间的推移促进和维持物种多样性的力量。在这个奖项下，我们寻求了解基因组和环境如何相互作用，以促进生物多样性。为此，我们将利用一个结合了实验易处理性和进化丰富性的系统。慈鲷是一个家庭的淡水鱼从东非裂谷，无可争议的是最成功的进化组脊椎动物在这个星球上。在几百万年的时间里，一千多个物种从一个共同的祖先进化而来。换句话说，在人类物种衰老的相同时间内，一千种慈鲷科鱼类进化了。在这里，我们将采取遗传学的方法来试图理解这是如何发生的。具体来说，我们将扫描头部形状不同的鱼类的基因组，以寻找导致物种差异的基因。强调头部有直接的生态后果，因为不同的头部形状将决定鱼的生活地点和食物。我们还将在不同的环境条件下重复这项实验，以更好地了解基因组中的不同基因在不同环境条件下如何表达，以促进物种多样性和进化成功。这个高度跨学科的项目提供了丰富的知识景观，以培养学生在各种方法和理论。它还提供了一个明确的框架，使高中科学教师与进化生物学的最新趋势，概念和理论保持同步。从本质上讲，它有可能使高中课程在进化教育方面现代化。最后一点特别重要，因为最近的一项调查显示，只有14%的美国人认为进化论“绝对正确”。很明显，我们让学生们失望了，由于高中是许多美国人最后一次上科学课，因此改进我们向这个年龄段教授进化论的方法和策略至关重要。

Biodiversity is all around us, and its origins have been the focus of intense study for centuries. In spite of these efforts, however, we remain largely ignorant of the forces that promote and maintain species diversity over time. Under this award we seek to understand how the genome and environment interact to promote biodiversity. To this end we will take advantage of a system that combines experimental tractability and evolutionary richness. Cichlids are a family of fresh water fish from the East African Rift-Valley that are indisputably the most evolutionarily successful group of vertebrates on the planet. In a few million years, over a thousand species have evolved from a common ancestor. To put it another way, in the same amount of time that the human species is old, a thousand cichlid species have evolved. Here we will take a genetic approach to try to understand how this came to be. Specifically, we will scan the genomes of fish with differently shaped heads to search for genes that have contributed to species differences. An emphasis on the head has a direct ecological consequence, as different head shapes will determine where a fish lives and what it feeds on. We will also repeat this experiment under different environmental conditions to gain a better appreciation for how different genes in the genome are expressed under different environmental conditions to promote species diversity and evolutionary success. This highly interdisciplinary project provides a rich intellectual landscape to train students in various methods and theories. It also offers an explicit framework to bring high school science teachers up to date with the latest trends, concepts and theories in evolutionary biology. In essence it has the potential to modernize the high school curriculum with respect to evolution education. This last point is of particular importance, as a recent survey showed that only 14% of Americans considered evolution to be "definitely true". Clearly we are failing our students, and since high school is the last time when many Americans will take a science course, it is of paramount importance to improve our methods and strategies for teaching evolution to this age group.