DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Evolution of diet breadth of Melissodes (Hymenoptera: Apidae)

本土蜜蜂提供多种生态系统服务，包括为农作物和野花授粉。在所描述的20，000种蜜蜂中，大多数是多面手，为大量植物授粉。 其他的是专家，只为特定的植物授粉。 长期以来，人们一直认为蜜蜂是从一个广义的祖先进化到更专业化的，但最近的研究表明，从专业祖先进化到广义可能更常见。 该项目将调查蜜蜂属Melissodes内饮食宽度变化的方向和频率，Melissodes有130个物种，范围从加拿大到阿根廷。花粉将从蜜蜂的腿上收集，并通过将从花粉样品中分离的内转录间隔区DNA序列与GenBank中的参考序列进行比较来鉴定。Melissodes的饮食宽度的进化将使用一个支持良好的分子系统学作为框架进行重建。该奖项将培训博士生，硕士生和本科生，包括代表性不足的群体的成员，在不同的系统学方法。该奖项还将开发一个在线密钥，以帮助识别可供专家和公众使用的不同Melissodes蜜蜂物种。

Native bees provide a diversity of ecosystem services, including the pollination of crops and wildflowers. Most of the 20,000 described species of bees are generalists and pollinate a large number of plants. The others are specialists and only pollinate specific plants. It was long thought that bees had evolved towards greater specialization from a generalized ancestor, but recent studies have shown that the evolution of generalization from specialist ancestors may be more common. This project will investigate the direction and frequency of changes in diet breadth within the bee genus Melissodes, which has 130 species and ranges from Canada to Argentina. Pollen will be collected from the legs of bees and identified by comparing Internal Transcribed Spacer DNA sequences isolated from the pollen samples to reference sequences in GenBank. Evolution of diet breadth within Melissodes will then be reconstructed using a well-supported molecular phylogeny as a framework.This award will train a doctoral student, Masters students and undergraduates, including members of underrepresented groups, in diverse systematics methods. This award will also develop an online key to help identification of different Melissodes bee species that can be used by both specialists and the general public.