DISSERTATION RESEARCH: The consequences of natural and anthropogenic geographic range expansion

当今的一个重大科学挑战是了解生物入侵对环境变化的影响。这项拟议的研究使用了海洋蛤和蜗牛的化石和现代数据，比较了沿着其本土海岸扩大地理范围的物种的进化变化，以及在人类（偶然或有意）帮助下跨越海洋盆地的入侵物种的变化。本研究将评估可能赋予扩张优势的生物学特征（例如，体型），分析在原生和入侵扩张中，源区和定殖区之间壳形状的变化，并通过实验评估遗传进化对这种壳形状变化的贡献。最终，本研究试图通过与“本地”生物的比较来了解海洋系统中的生物入侵。物种扩张，当地人接触到新的气候和新的生态群落。尽管入侵物种的负面影响，它们可能提供了一个窗口，以了解在当代时间尺度上，最近被殖民的地区发生的快速进化适应。这项提议的研究有可能深入了解物种对过去气候变化的进化反应，并可能帮助我们预测物种如何适应当前气候变化下的扩张。

A major scientific challenge today is understanding the consequences of biological invasions in response to environmental change. The proposed research uses fossil and modern data on marine clams and snails to compare evolutionary changes in species that have expanded geographic ranges along their native coasts with changes in invasive species that have crossed ocean basins with (accidental or intentional) human assistance. This research will evaluate biological characteristics that may confer an expansion advantage (for example, body size), analyze changes in shell shape between the source and colonized regions in both native and invasive expansions, and experimentally assess the contribution of genetic evolution to such shell shape variation.Ultimately, this research seeks to understand biological invasions in marine systems through comparisons with ?native? species expansions, where the natives are coming into contact with novel climates and new ecological communities. Despite the negative consequences of invasive species, they may offer a window into the rapid evolutionary adaptation that occurs in a recently colonized region over contemporary timescales. The proposed research has the potential to give insight into the evolutionary responses of species to past climate change and may help us predict how species adapt in response to expansions under current climate change.