Collaborative Research: Not so Fast - Historical biogeography of freshwater fishes in Central America and the Greater Antilles

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The Central America/Greater Antilles region, including Puerto Rico, has one of the most complex geological histories in the world, with extinct and current landbridges, drifting island chains and many moving parts over the last 70 million years. With over 500 species of freshwater fishes,this region can inform us about this complicated history because the fish are typically restricted to freshwater habitats on those moving landmasses (i.e., they can only move among areas that are physically connected). Thus, the history of freshwater fishes can help reveal the complex history of the islands and landmasses that currently make up the Central American landbridge and the Greater Antillean islands. This project will help researchers better understand the impact of the separation of the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean and the connection of North and South America by what is now Central America and potentially by earlier landbridges. Researchers will gain a better understanding of how unique historical events can result in mass species diversification or mass extinction, and how the formation of dispersal corridors can degrade biotic provincialism. Working with local Caribbean and Latin American colleagues as well as student members of their own labs, researchers will use this evolutionary, taxonomic and geographic knowledge to determine the conservation status of these poorly understood and potentially threatened lineages of fish species. The conservation status will be used by local and national governments to prioritize conservation actions for added societal benefit.In this study, researchers will collect specimens of the regions freshwater fishes in order to obtain DNA and morphological specimens for museums. Phylogenetic relationships will be estimated using a next-generation sequencing approach applied to several hundred species. These analyses will include species tree estimation, divergence date estimations and historical biogeographical analyses. This synthetic analysis will determine the relationships and historical processes leading to present patterns of diversity. The results will be distributed through scientific publications, databases and Encyclopedia of Life species pages. Thousands of museum specimens, next-generation genomic markers, and newly developed phylogenetic and biogeographic programs will be made available as the products of this work.