NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2015

这项行动资助了2015财年NSF生物学博士后研究奖学金，使用生物收集的研究。该研究金支持研究员的研究和培训计划，以采取变革性方法应对生物学的重大挑战，以高度创新的方式利用生物学收藏。 这个奖学金的研究计划的标题是西玛Sheth是“气候耐受性之间的关系，性状进化，和多样化的加州植物群。“该奖学金的主办机构是加州大学伯克利分校，赞助科学家是大卫阿克利博士和布鲁斯鲍德温博士。 某些地理区域和进化谱系比其他物种拥有更多的物种，但这种变化的原因仍然知之甚少。包含具有广泛气候耐受性的物种的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。奖学金研究评估多样化率之间的关系，形态和气候生态位的演变率，和气候耐受性，以更好地了解植物多样性的起源在加州植物区系省，在温带北美植物多样性地区。虽然多样化率之间的关系，性状进化和气候耐受性已被广泛研究的动物，有较少的评估植物，主要是由于在数据的质量和可用性的限制。加州植物区系省提供了一个独特的机会，以检查这些关系，在一组研究充分的植物谱系，从而提高我们的理解植物多样性的起源和限制进化的深时间。空间和系统发育分析的基础上的形态和地理数据来自标本馆标本在大学和杰普森植物标本馆被用来阐明生物多样性的地理模式的形成过程中，从而提高我们的能力，优先考虑的谱系和保护关注的领域，预测环境变化的脆弱性，并制定管理策略，保护进化历史和独特的遗传多样性。 培训目标包括获得宏观进化和系统发育方法的专业知识，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.