CAREER: Evolution of Morphological Diversity in Primates as revealed by 3D Digital Data, Comprehensive Datasets, and Automated Phenotyping

职业：3D 数字数据、综合数据集和自动表型分析揭示灵长类动物形态多样性的演变

• 批准号: 1552848
• 负责人: Douglas Boyer
• 金额: $ 49.81万
• 依托单位: Duke University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-06-01 至 2023-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1552848&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Evolution; Morphological; Diversity; Primates

In this CAREER award Dr. Doug Boyer, along with collaborators, will collect data on primate skeletons in the form of 3D digital imagery of museum specimens and apply newly developed algorithmic methods to analyze and interpret the evolutionary meaning of those data. This research will address fundamental questions about how modern primate diversity came to be, work to refine understanding of the incremental processes that differentiated humanity from its closest relatives. As a result of this research 3D digital models will be added to Duke?s virtual museum (www.morphosource.org), which is accessible to all researchers and the public; the bioinformatics analysis tools his team is developing will enable researchers to analyze and interpret data on geometrically complex aspects anatomical diversity. Boyer will simultaneously work with education scientists connecting this virtual museum to educators and students in ways that emphasize STEM learning and Next Generation Science Standards. In addition, the virtual museum -- open to contributions from any scientist -- will provide a forum where researchers can easily disseminate their data (and theoretical advances stemming from it) to educators and public.In Boyer's 5-year project he will execute studies targeting hypotheses central to perceptions of how primates evolved: 1) Influence of dietary ecology on primate characteristics: mechanical properties of tooth geometry will be quantified and their evolutionary tempo and mode will be modeled across living and fossil primates to see whether a diet of insects or herbaceous material has driven various episodes of diversification. The team will also evaluate whether certain other distinctive features of primate skeletons can be related to dietary needs or other biological roles by assessing patterns of covariation among all traits of interest. 2) Influence of functional constraints on patterns of evolution: Boyer and his team will determine how anatomical solutions to ecological problems in ancestral primates have affected subsequent paths of diversification by running analyses that compare magnitudes and patterns of variation among different regions of the skeleton across primates. This project will contribute multiple studies introducing a new paradigm for testing evolutionary hypotheses. Additionally, it creates a novel bioinformatics infrastructure that democratizes access to morphological datasets and enables a broader community of researchers to analyze such data, setting the stage for synchronizing morphological studies with genomic ones, and will ultimately maximizing the explanatory power of research utilizing morphology to gain insight on evolutionary processes. In particular, molecular and evolutionary-developmental biologists will be able to evaluate the significance of morphological variation associated with genetic and gene-expression data, and biomedical engineers will be able to automate measurement protocols and evaluate variation in their data more rapidly and efficiently.

在这项职业奖中，Doug Boyer 博士与合作者将以博物馆标本 3D 数字图像的形式收集灵长类骨骼数据，并应用新开发的算法方法来分析和解释这些数据的进化意义。这项研究将解决有关现代灵长类动物多样性如何形成的基本问题，努力加深对人类与其近亲区别开来的渐进过程的理解。作为这项研究的结果，3D 数字模型将被添加到杜克大学的虚拟博物馆 (www.morphosource.org)，所有研究人员和公众都可以访问该博物馆；他的团队正在开发的生物信息学分析工具将使研究人员能够分析和解释有关几何复杂方面和解剖多样性的数据。博耶将同时与教育科学家合作，以强调 STEM 学习和下一代科学标准的方式将这个虚拟博物馆与教育工作者和学生联系起来。此外，虚拟博物馆向任何科学家开放，将提供一个论坛，研究人员可以在其中向教育工作者和公众轻松传播他们的数据（以及由此产生的理论进展）。在博耶的 5 年项目中，他将针对灵长类动物进化认知的假设进行研究：1）饮食生态对灵长类动物特征的影响：牙齿几何形状的机械特性将被量化，它们的进化速度和模式将被量化。 将在现存灵长类动物和化石灵长类动物中进行建模，以了解昆虫或草本植物的饮食是否驱动了各种多样化的事件。研究小组还将通过评估所有感兴趣特征之间的共变模式，评估灵长类骨骼的某些其他独特特征是否与饮食需求或其他生物学作用有关。 2）功能限制对进化模式的影响：博耶和他的团队将通过比较灵长类动物骨骼不同区域之间的变异幅度和模式进行分析，确定祖先灵长类动物生态问题的解剖学解决方案如何影响随后的多样化路径。该项目将贡献多项研究，引入测试进化假设的新范式。此外，它还创建了一个新颖的生物信息学基础设施，使形态学数据集的访问民主化，并使更广泛的研究人员能够分析此类数据，为形态学研究与基因组研究同步奠定基础，并最终最大限度地利用形态学研究的解释力来深入了解进化过程。 特别是，分子和进化发育生物学家将能够评估与遗传和基因表达数据相关的形态变异的重要性，生物医学工程师将能够自动化测量方案并更快、更有效地评估数据的变异。