Collaborative Research: Discovering genomic and developmental mechanisms that underlie sensory innovations critical to adaptive diversification

所有的动物都必须感知环境和其他生物来寻找食物、躲避威胁和寻找伴侣。一些个体比其他个体更有效地找到食物和配偶的能力可以为它们留下更多的后代提供机会。然而，多个高级感官系统很少在同一物种中进化，尽管它们可能赋予优势，这表明发展几种特殊感官存在物理限制。这个项目关注的是一组不同的热带蝙蝠，在这些蝙蝠中，不同的物种进化出了敏锐、专门的听觉、超敏感的眼睛、闻到微妙植物化学物质的能力，或者高度发达的舌鼻系统（被认为有助于交配和社会等级）。该项目将比较150多种蝙蝠中涉及视觉、听觉、嗅觉和犁鼻系统的大约2000个基因。为了找出这些基因是如何促进不同感觉系统的发展，他们的行为将在实验室进行研究。这项研究将揭示特定基因在获得特殊感觉中的作用，测试头部的大小是否限制了一个物种可以拥有的特殊感觉结构的数量，并发现随着时间的推移，感觉适应如何促进物种的多样性。该项目将揭示蝙蝠超家族中听觉、视觉、嗅觉和犁鼻系统的基因和结构的进化，这些系统的特征是与特定饮食相关的不同感觉适应。对基因进化的分析将用于检验感官创新是通过基因复制和积极选择产生的假设。从野外收集的组织中测量基因表达，以及在发育中的胚胎中表达关键蝙蝠基因的实验，将用于阐明基因如何塑造适应性感觉结构。对感觉结构尺寸的详细测量进行比较分析，将评估感觉系统之间的权衡，以及这些可能限制饮食或物种多样性的方式。将使用最先进的方法来量化基因和性状进化与物种多样性之间的关系，以发现感官适应对物种多样性的影响。这项研究将阐明基因组、胚胎发育和解剖结构中的主要生物力量，这些力量有助于物种成功适应不断挑战的环境。

All animals must sense their environment and other organisms to find food, avoid threats, and find partners. The ability of some individuals to locate food and mates more effectively than others can open opportunities for them to leave many more descendants. And yet, multiple advanced sensory systems seldom evolve in the same species despite the advantages they may confer, suggesting there are physical limits to developing several specialized senses. This project focuses on a diverse group of tropical bats in which various species evolved acute, specialized hearing, supersensitive eyes, the ability to smell subtle plant chemicals, or highly developed vomeronasal systems (thought to contribute to mating and social hierarchy). This project will compare approximately 2000 genes involved in vision, hearing, olfaction and the vomeronasal system in more than 150 bat species. To find out how some of these genes contribute to developing distinct sensory systems, their actions will be studied in the lab. This research will uncover the role of specific genes in the acquisition of specialized senses, test whether the size of the head limits the number of specialized sensory structures a species can have, and discover how sensory adaptations contribute to the diversity of species through time.This project will uncover the evolution of genes and structures of the auditory, visual, and olfactory and vomeronasal systems in a large superfamily of bats characterized by diverse sensory adaptations associated with specific diets. Analyses of gene evolution will be used to test the hypothesis that sensory innovations arise through gene duplication and positive selection. Measurements of gene expression from tissues collected in the field, and experiments to express key bat genes in developing embryos will be used to elucidate how genes shape adaptive sensory structures. Comparative analyses of detailed measurements of the size of sensory structures will evaluate trade-offs between sensory systems and the way these may limit diversity of diets or species. State-of-the art methods to quantify relationships between gene and trait evolution and species diversity will be used to discover the impact of sensory adaptation on species diversity through time. This research will illuminate the main biological forces in the genome, during embryonic development, and in anatomical structures that contribute to the success of species in adapting to their ever-challenging environment.