NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2015

本行动资助美国国家科学基金会2015年度生物学博士后研究奖学金，利用生物馆藏进行研究。该奖学金支持一项研究和培训计划，使研究员能够以高度创新的方式采用生物收集的变革性方法来应对生物学方面的重大挑战。Seema Sheth的研究计划的标题是“气候耐受性、性状进化和加利福尼亚植物群多样化之间的关系”。该奖学金的主办机构是加州大学伯克利分校，赞助科学家是dr。大卫·阿克利和布鲁斯·鲍德温。某些地理区域和进化谱系比其他地方拥有更多的物种，然而这种变异的原因仍然知之甚少。具有广泛气候耐受性的物种谱系可能表现出快速的性状和气候生态位进化，这反过来又可能通过高物种形成、低灭绝或两者兼而有之来加速物种的积累。为了更好地了解北美温带植物多样性地区加利福尼亚植物区系的植物多样性起源，本研究评估了植物多样性率、形态和气候生态位演化率以及气候耐受性之间的关系。尽管多样化率、性状进化和气候耐受性之间的关系已经在动物中得到了广泛的研究，但对植物的评估却很少，这主要是由于数据质量和可用性的限制。加利福尼亚植物区系省提供了一个独特的机会，可以在一组经过充分研究的植物谱系中检查这些关系，从而提高我们对植物多样性起源和深时间进化限制的理解。基于来自大学和杰普森植物标本馆的植物标本的形态和地理数据的空间和系统发育分析被用来揭示生物多样性地理格局的形成过程，从而提高我们优先考虑谱系和保护关注区域的能力，预测环境变化的脆弱性，并制定保护进化历史和独特遗传多样性的管理策略。培训目标包括获得宏观进化和系统发育方法方面的专业知识，进行开放和可重复的科学研究，以及管理和分析大型数据集。更广泛的影响包括指导来自历史上代表性不足的群体的本科生，并将结果传播给管理加州保护区和类似生态系统的联邦和州机构。

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2015, Research Using Biological Collections. The fellowship supports a research and training plan for the Fellow to take transformative approaches to grand challenges in biology that employ biological collections in highly innovative ways. The title of the research plan for this fellowship to Seema Sheth is "Relationships among climatic tolerance, trait evolution, and diversification in the California flora." The host institution for this fellowship is the University of California, Berkeley, and the sponsoring scientists are Drs. David Ackerly and Bruce Baldwin. Certain geographic areas and evolutionary lineages harbor a greater number of species than others, yet the causes of such variation remain poorly understood. Lineages containing species with broad climatic tolerances may exhibit rapid trait and climatic niche evolution, which in turn could accelerate the accumulation of species via high speciation, low extinction, or both. The fellowship research assesses the relationships among diversification rates, rates of morphological and climatic niche evolution, and climatic tolerance to better understand the origins of plant diversity in the California Floristic Province, a botanically diverse region in temperate North America. Although the relationships among diversification rates, trait evolution, and climatic tolerances have been widely studied in animals, there have been fewer assessments in plants, largely due to limitations in the quality and availability of data. The California Floristic Province provides a unique opportunity to examine these relationships in a well-studied set of plant lineages, thereby improving our understanding of the origins of plant diversity and the limits to evolution in deep time. Spatial and phylogenetic analyses based on morphological and geographic data derived from herbarium specimens housed at the University and Jepson Herbaria are being used to shed light on the processes shaping geographic patterns of biodiversity, thus improving our ability to prioritize lineages and areas of conservation concern, forecast vulnerabilities to environmental change, and devise management strategies that preserve evolutionary history and unique genetic diversity. Training goals include gaining expertise in macroevolutionary and phylogenetic methods, performing open and reproducible scientific research, and managing and analyzing large datasets. Broader impacts include mentoring undergraduate students from historically underrepresented groups and dissemination of results to federal and state agencies that manage protected areas in California and similar ecosystems.