DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Inferring the Evolutionary History of Arthropods Associated with Pitcher Plants using Phylogeographic Concordance Factors.

物种之间的相互作用是生态群落形成、结构和存在的驱动力。在这些群落中，物种相互作用，争夺资源，最终塑造了地球上生物多样性的存在和分布。进化生物学的一个中心问题是这些生态群落是如何形成的，以及这些相互作用持续了多久。这项研究将提供一个新的工具，了解生态群落是否在进化的时间尺度上持续存在，以及共存物种在多大程度上表现出相似的遗传多样性模式。如果生态群落表现出共同进化历史的强烈模式，那么单个成员的灭绝可能会对其他生态相关物种造成严重影响。了解这些属性将有助于深入了解物种如何应对更新世冰期的动态景观和气候变化，并将帮助保护管理人员确定需要保护的区域。本研究的目的是开发一种新的统计方法，在一个生态群落的共同多样化的地理一致性因素测试。这一综合将查明各物种共同的多样化模式以及不符合这些模式的物种。系统地理学一致性因素从多个共存物种中获取物种树分布，并确定分支之间共享的模式。这些分支，然后被用来构建一个和谐树，提供一个支持值，最好的代表多样化模式的社区的单基因。重要的是，这种方法将确定物种是一个占主导地位的模式的离群值。沿着开发的方法作为一个包的统计平台R，这种方法将被证明在瓶子草阿拉塔食肉猪笼草系统。该系统位于美国东南部的地形和地质复杂的地区，在那里以前的一些研究已经记录了紧急地形模式。来自该社区的五种节肢动物的线粒体数据表明，遗传变异的结构与宿主植物相似，但从核基因组产生的初步序列数据暗示了该系统更复杂的进化历史，使该系统成为使用地理一致性因素进行研究的理想选择。这一新工具将提高研究人员的能力，以确定多样化的共同模式和影响生物多样性的进化过程。

Interactions among species are driving forces behind the formation, structure and existence of ecological communities. In these communities, species interact with one another, compete for resources, and ultimately shape the existence and distribution of biodiversity on Earth. A central question of evolutionary biology is how these ecological communities came to be, and how long these interactions have persisted. This research will provide a new tool for understanding if ecological communities have persisted over evolutionary time scales, and to what extent the co-occurring species show similar patterns in their genetic diversity. If ecological communities exhibit strong patterns of a shared evolutionary history, the extinction of a single member may be dire for other ecologically associated species. Understanding these attributes will provide insight into how species responded to the dynamic landscape and climatic changes during the Pleistocene ice ages, and will help conservation managers identify regions in need of protection. This research aims to develop phylogeographic concordance factors, a novel statistical approach testing for co-diversification in an ecological community. This synthesis will identify common diversification patterns across species as well as species that do not conform to these patterns. Phylogeographic concordance factors take in species tree distributions from multiple co-occurring species, and identify patterns shared among the clades. These clades are then used to construct a concordance tree, providing a phylogeny with support values that best represents diversification patterns of the community. Importantly, this method will identify species that are outliers of a dominant pattern. Along with developing the method as a package for the statistical platform R, this approach will be demonstrated in the Sarracenia alata carnivorous pitcher plant system. This system is located in the topographically and geologically complex region of the southeastern United States, where a number of previous studies have documented emergent biogeographic patterns. Mitochondrial data from five arthropods from this community indicate that genetic variation has been structured in a similar way to the host plant, but preliminary sequence data generated from the nuclear genome implies a more complex evolutionary history for this system, making the system ideal for studies using phylogeographic concordance factors. This new tool will enhance the ability of researchers to identify shared patterns of diversification, and the evolutionary processes that have influenced biodiversity.