Collaborative Research: The role of habitat transitions in parallel marine fish radiations

合作研究：栖息地转变在平行海洋鱼类辐射中的作用

• 批准号: 1457184
• 负责人: Ricardo Betancur
• 金额: $ 37.52万
• 依托单位: University of Puerto Rico-Rio Piedras
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-05-15 至 2019-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1457184&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; role; habitat; transitions

Fish diversity spans high-performance swimmers such as tunas, barracudas, and swordfish that spend their entire life cruising the open ocean in search of food (pelagic species) to sluggish, sedentary forms such as flounders or seahorses that live buried in the bottom or attached to vegetation (benthic species). Much variation in body form and habit can be explained by adaptation to the habitats where these fishes live. But the effects of ecological habitat on processes leading to diversification over evolutionary time remain poorly explored. This project will focus on two groups of closely related species that harbor a huge diversity of benthic and pelagic forms (about 2000 species) to disentangle the effects of habitat transitions on rates of speciation and extinction. Understanding the factors that promote diversification in form and habit is important for the long-term conservation of marine biodiversity. Innovative image data analysis necessary to synthesize morphological variation among these fishes also will be applied to develop a fish species identification app for smartphones (FishSnap) that will be freely available to the public, expandable in the future to include all fishes. Educational opportunities will be available for undergraduate and graduate students and outreach activities in partnership with the National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC will result in a new public exhibit on fish biodiversity.Recent studies in fish phylogenetics are resolving long-lasting uncertainties about the relationships among the most species-rich marine fish groups, and opening up unprecedented opportunities to infer mechanisms that explain their extraordinary diversity. This project takes advantage of newly discovered affinities among fishes that revealed two independent clades with benthic and pelagic forms to investigate connections between genomic and morphological features in relation to their ecological habitat. The researchers will collect and compare a genome-scale DNA sequence data set of protein-coding genes to infer a phylogenetic tree for about 800 species of these two groups. This tree will be time-calibrated on the basis of carefully selected fossil data to provide a dated evolutionary framework for comparative studies. The project will also assemble a large phenotypic (digital image) dataset of curated specimens for morphometric analysis. Using state-of-the art comparative methodologies, this project will shed light on the effect of habitat shifts along the benthic-pelagic axis on the rate of morphological and lineage diversification. The integration of well-resolved molecular phylogenies, the fossil record, trait and ecological data, and comparative methodologies will provide new insights to understand the causes of marine biodiversity.

鱼类多样性包括高性能的游泳者，如金枪鱼，梭鱼和旗鱼，它们一生都在公海上巡航寻找食物（远洋物种），以缓慢，定居的形式，如比目鱼或海马，生活在底部或附着在植被上（底栖物种）。在身体形态和习惯的变化可以解释为适应这些鱼类生活的栖息地。但是，生态栖息地的影响过程中导致多样化的进化时间仍然很少探索。该项目将重点关注两组密切相关的物种，它们具有巨大的底栖和浮游形式多样性（约2000种），以解开栖息地转变对物种形成和灭绝速度的影响。了解促进形式和习性多样化的因素对于长期养护海洋生物多样性十分重要。创新的图像数据分析，合成这些鱼类之间的形态变化也将被应用于开发一个鱼类物种识别应用程序的智能手机（FishSnap），将免费提供给公众，在未来扩展到包括所有鱼类。将为本科生和研究生提供教育机会，与华盛顿国家自然历史博物馆合作开展的外联活动将导致一个关于鱼类生物多样性的新的公共展览。最近对鱼类遗传学的研究正在解决物种最丰富的海洋鱼类群体之间关系的长期不确定性，并开辟了前所未有的机会来推断解释其非凡多样性的机制。该项目利用新发现的鱼类之间的亲和力，揭示了两个独立的分支与底栖和远洋形式，调查基因组和形态特征之间的联系，其生态栖息地。研究人员将收集和比较蛋白质编码基因的基因组规模的DNA序列数据集，以推断这两组中约800个物种的系统发育树。这棵树将在精心挑选的化石数据的基础上进行时间校准，为比较研究提供一个过时的进化框架。该项目还将收集一个大型的标本表型（数字图像）数据集，用于形态分析。利用最先进的比较方法，该项目将揭示生境沿底栖-中上层轴沿着的变化对形态和谱系多样化速度的影响。将解析良好的分子生物学、化石记录、特征和生态数据以及比较方法结合起来，将为理解海洋生物多样性的原因提供新的见解。